New Arrivals
Kippschwingungen
In 2007, Frank Bretschneider was invited to compose music for the Subharchord, a unique electronic instrument developed during the 1960’s at the RFZ, the technical center for radio and television of the East German postal service. Built in a limited edition of eight machines total, only three Subharcords (in Vienna, Trondheim and Berlin) are believed to survive to this day. The Subharchord is, broadly defined, a subharmonic sound generator, comparable soundwise to the Mixturtrautonium. It’s sugg…
Middle Eastern Rock
An inspired fusion of Middle Eastern rhythms and psychedelia resulted in this the gorgeous album by accomplished oud player John Berberian and his troop of skilled musicians. First released on Verve/Forecast in 1969 this exotic album features music based on traditional themes from Turkey, Armenia, Greece, Arabia and North Africa blended with the terrific improvised energy of psychedelia. So what you end up with here is bustling bazaars and scorched sands passed through the prism of the lysergic …
From The Ground
The Preservation label presents From The Ground, the debut album from Portland, Oregon’s Heather Woods Broderick. Growing up in the relative quiet of the Maine countryside while learning a range of instruments and being sung to sleep by her parents playing folk songs, natural and rural sounds became central to Heather’s sense of song, falling into a deeply personal realm.
The subtlety and nuance in Heather’s music also comes from her inclination towards ambient and experimental sounds, con…
Leyfou Ljosinu
Icelandic cellist Hildur Gudnadóttir presents a new album, Leyfdu Ljósinu (trans. "Allow The Light"), recorded live at the Music Research Centre, University of York, in January 2012, by Tony Myatt, using a SoundField ST450 Ambisonic microphone and two Neumann U87 microphones (NB -- it was not played in a concert environment and there was no audience). To be faithful to time and space -- elements vital to the movement of sound -- this album was recorded entirely live, with no post-tampering …
Februar
Within the four-tenth-hasty Suite February von Luigi Archetti the individual musical-acoustic events seem to have out-pulled in individual sound-pure from the being silent background. Looking for, a "Hinhoeren" and emphasizing hidden, electrifying sound particle. The attempt is to be given to the shade of the music a voice. Klangliche atmospheres through-cross feeling and conception. Fourteen ephemeren sound places, arranges for the listener a music, which reciprocates between imagination, expec…
Bones
After playing bass with Rodan, pioneers of post-rock and post-hardcore, the long-respected and much-lauded Tara Jane ONeil has formed bands like The Sonora Pine and Retsin and has collaborated with Sebadoh, Papa M, Come, Low and Ida. Her first two solo albums for the Quarterstick label (Calexico, Rachels, June of ‘44), Peregrine and In The Sun Lines drew great acclaim for a rich musical tapestry The Wire has called “evocative dream music”. Consistently on the move, ONeil records all over the US,…
Fire And Frost Pattern
“The cold ice burns like the hot fire” wrote Max Beckmann in 1948 in his letter to an imaginary female painter. The extremes of fire and ice have always been a popular metaphor for the opposites of ardent passion and unfeeling frigidity, of flux and torpor – extremes which, for all our polarizing way of perceiving them, are very similar. This is also true, especially so in fact, in the acoustic field: in terms of their behaviour and dynamics, the sounds we associate with fire and ice – as create…
EARR plays a Snare is a Bell
a Snare is a Bell is a solo piece for snare drum, voice and the room in which it is played.Inspired by some close encounters I had with African shamanic/trance musicians and my personal experiences with meditation and music, it also relates to a known-to-many-of-us acoustical wonder of sitting on the toilet and picking up the tone of that little room (often by accident while coughing or talking out loud to oneself) and enjoying to sing that tone and let the toilet become filled with an eno…
Bruder Luzifer
23 Track CD Anthology. For three decades Hamburg's Felix Kubin operated as an undercover Sci-Fi pop visionary. Lurching from seasick electronics to dramatic outsider songcraft, the highlights of Kubin's engaging teenage experiments (Krematorien) and later pop masterworks (Lightning Strikes) mingle here with electrified spaghetti-western romps (Sabàta) and terminal noise-spasms (Dead End Brain). Lovingly curated, this deluxe collector's edition features exclusive liner notes, unpublished p…
Scilens
Edition of 200 housed in vacuum sealed package* Chicagoan electro-acoustic trio present their 10th release and third full length album. The equipment list for 'Scilens' should give some indication of the breadth of sonorities they're working with: A-Bitrman, Acousticon hearing aid, A-52, air conditioner, bass drum, baoding balls, bows (cello and violin), cassette recorders, contact microphones, crotales, cymbals, DS-1, EHX-2880, e-bow, electric fan, electric bass, fabric, floor tom, found…
Smudge Another Yesterday
Pimmon is the alias for electronic composer Paul Gough. In the last decade, Pimmon has forged an international reputation for creating dense, challenging and engaging electronic music. Smudge Another Yesterday is Pimmon’s first full length release in five years. This release picks up and goes further from the point where the acclaimed Secret Sleeping Birds left off. Smudge Another Yesterday is an exploration of the song behind the noise; the secret whispers hidden in the static. Within these vas…
Filmworks XXIII: El General
Eleven cues recorded for a striking documentary focusing on the life of controversial Mexican dictator Plutarco Elias Calles who was called everything from a nun-burner to the father of modern Mexico. Beautiful and dramatic, the music is scored for guitar, marimba, accordion/piano and bass and subtly draws upon Mexican, Spanish, minimalist and soundtrack traditions. Zorn's fifth film score in as many months is a pure delight. Moody and exotic music for a creative and revealing film dealing with …
Play robot dream
Trumpet virtuoso Marco Blaauw, known for his pioneering performances of contemporary classical music has been working with composer and sound improviser Yannis Kyriakides in numerous projects including a multi-media perfomance 'co-inc', and several projects for the ensemble musikFabrik in Cologne. 'Play Robot Dream' is a set of improvisations for trumpet(s) and computer. At times playful, at times meditative, they fuse a haunting melodic tendency with a provocative mix of drum machines an…
Every live is problem solving
A suggestive gallery of abstract images, confused fragments of life and real living experiences, sights of urban landscapes... Noisy and electronic interferences, mechanical machines movements, concrete noises, low frequences fluxes, hissing sounds, interferences, but also melodic acoustic guitar pieces, human voices and other field recordings... A brave, uncompromising and heterogeneous "decomposed" mosaic of avantgarde sound art beyond time, beyond any point of view and any geometric coordina…
Parallel World
Originally released in 1976 by Nippon Columbia, this is the final album by legendary Japanese space/psych-rockers Far East Family Band. Droney and far-out electronica influenced by German producer/electronic music composer Klaus Schulze is more pronounced, merging prog rock with electronic music to create something rather weird and wonderful. Although Schulze oversaw the production of the album rather than playing on it (which he definitely didn't!), the synth star here is Masanori Takahas…
Spiritual Jazz
Now-Again Records, in conjunction with Jazzman Records, presents an expanded version of the compilation that introduced many listeners to the sound of the unsung musicians who - in the midst of the Vietnam War and the fallout of the Civil Rights struggle - created some of the most beautiful spiritual and meditative music of the 60s and 70s. The music was at times funky, at times contemplative, but it always strived to say something about the world in which the musicians lived.
divide by zero
NEW SERIES FRAMEWORKAn extension of our CONCRETE ELECTRONICS NOISE,a brand new mix-up of unusual conceptions of sound material by young unknown composers, well known not-so-young composers and old but clever composers.Benjamin Thigpen, nomad, born in the United States, immigrated to Paris at the age of 31. He studied music, literature, philosophy and esthetics. He now composes in European studios such as GRM, EMS, Visby and STEIM, as well as in his bedroom and in the train. After six years as a …
Outdoor Spell
Rhys Chatham has trail-blazed a course through late 20th century music, equally aplomb in post-minimalist composition as he is in punk. Not since Roebling laid his span across the East River has there been an artist who builds bridges in both how we hear music and how we can appreciate art. His latest album, Outdoor Spell, is a further document in that direction. Here has has eschewed 100 guitars, or even himself playing a single guitar, for the trumpet and voice, both electrified and dry. It is…
It ended up being a great day, Mr. Allende
All music by Charbel Haber, recorded mixed and mastered by fadi tabbal at tunefork studios on the 16th and 17th of January 2012. all track titles are taken from roberto bolaño's novel 'nazi literature in the americas'. artwork and design by mazen kerbaj. produced in lebanon by al maslakh
Notturni
In the fall of 2011 the pianist Marino Formenti performed four one-hour solo concerts hosted by the Wien Modern festival. The so-called “Notturni” series was centered around the piano oeuvre of Friedrich Cerha. To celebrate the occasion Cerha wrote his first piece for solo piano in twenty years and dedicated it to Formenti. The pianist extraordinaire’s main objective in these performances was to contemplate the music jointly with his audience, to analyze and reanalyze the sounds of the in…