Best of 2023
Beziehungen
Super Tip! LP version. Re-release of the second album by Annexus Quam, originally released in 1972. Transferred from the original master tapes and carefully remastered by HaGü Schmitz and Dieter Wegner. The timing was right: Five years earlier would have been too early, five years later would have been too late. But Annexus Quam from Kamp-Lintfort near Düsseldorf came along with the right music at the right moment. The seven-piece band formed in 1967 as Ambition Of Music; they were what was then…
Gilles Zeitschiff 2
CD Edition. Re-release of the original 1974 album by "Timothy Leary!" -- That was "Sternenmädchen" Gille Lettmann's almost breathed closing words on the 1974 album Gilles Zeitschiff, Vol. 1 . That same year, the Cosmic Crew Gille, Dieter Dierks, Jürgen Dollase, Harald Großkopf, and Mythos recorded Vol. 2, but it never came to a release at that time -- let's say: due to circumstances. Until now. Almost 50 years after its recording, Zeitschiff 2 can finally take off. Gilles conjures up Leary's spi…
The Black Record
Necessary reissue of a truly seminal, minimalist totem and founding document of the avant-garde underground!
Babi
Mega Tip! **Sourced from the master tapes. First-time vinyl reissue ** By the early '70s, Milford Graves had more or less stopped gigging. Having learned his lesson the hard way in multiple-night runs like a legendary Slugs' residency with Albert Ayler, he knew that the level of energy that he put out during a performance would be difficult to sustain over the long haul. A concert was a kind of absolute ritual for him, after which he would be totally spent, emotionally and physically. Graves rar…
Song Of Soil
2024 Repress. Masahiko Togashi was a pivotal figure in the development of the Japanese free jazz scene in late 60s. Percussionist and composer, he lost the use of the legs in an accident which nevertheless didn’t not prevent him from continuing an astonishing career that includes long and established collaborations with figures of the likes of Steve Lacy, Charlie Haden, Mal Waldron and Paul Bley. This session, recorded in Paris at the Ramèse Studio Du Village in 1979, sees an explosive collabor…
Hands That Bind (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack for Hands That Bind, by Jim O'Rourke
Resolve
Following several releases over the past decade of archival Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excited Strings material and collaborations with other ensembles, on labels including Black Truffle, Choice Records, Megafaun and Superior Viaduct, Drag City is excited as well to be able to introduce Resolve, the first release of new Excited Strings music from Arnold Dreyblatt since 2002. Resolve acts in dialogue with the minimalist inspirations of the first Arnold Dreyblatt & The Orchestra of Excite…
Lifetime of a Flower
*Limited edition of 500 copies.* Eiko Ishibashi and Jim O‘Rourke created the installation Lifetime of a Flower for the Dortmund exhibition Flowers in 20th and 21st Century Art. In it they set parameters, but allowed the process itself to literally grow uncontrollably: they planted seeds in the garden of their Japanese house and filmed as the plants grew for the duration of the exhibition. Visitors were able to watch the stream in real time, while listening to a composition that reflected the org…
Sidiroun Parapetasma
“Sidiroun Parapetasma” is MMMΔ’s 14th release to date. The band is leaving -temporarily- behind the slow hypnotic beat experimentation of Nomenklatura and releases a powerful, majestic album of four tracks, a “clin d'œil” at the bootlegging practices of copying music to analogue tape and discarded X-rays in the Soviet era.
The music is heavy, monolithic and massive, filled with rhythmic explosions, repetitive motifs, ethereal synths and harsh atmospheric vocals or hidden screams that harmonize…
Resonance Gathering
Resonance Gathering is a double LP and book that documents a large-scale performance project on the music of composer Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) that occurred in Canada between 2017-2019. The project gathered nineteen interdisciplinary performers (mostly non-musicians) to interpret Oliveros’s score To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation (1970)—a work for sound and light that was written in response to the anxiety and political unrest of 1968 in America. Organ…
Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico
2023 Repress American composer and multi-instrumentalist Alvin Curran has remained one of the great emblems of experimental music for the last half-century. In 1966, along with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, Curran co-founded Musica Elettronica Viva, a seminal gesture in collective free improvisation. In the early '70s, his solo work would become a crucial bridge between minimalist traditions on both sides of the Atlantic. Canti E Vedute Del Giardino Magnetico, Curran's solo debut, was…
Extensions
McCoy Tyner looked towards Africa on his stunning 1970 album Extensions, a far-reaching exploration of Black identity that marked the masterful pianist’s fifth recording for Blue Note Records. After leaving John Coltrane’s band Tyner had moved from Impulse to Blue Note and made his enduring post-bop classic The Real McCoy in 1967. In the following years Tyner steadily expanded his musical scope: writing for a 9-piece ensemble on Tender Moments, exploring the textures of a piano-vibes led quartet…
Indefinitive Atmosphere
Giovanni Tommaso is the greatest Italian Jazz bassist and founder and member of the most important ever Italian Jazz Rock ensembles, the Perigeo band. Sonor entirely restored the full session from the original tapes found, and digitally remastered the sound for a greater sound experience, chasing the original analog source
Outspan No 1
Tip! It's hard to imagine how this record -- and it's mate, Outspan No 2 -- managed to remain more or less out of circulation from the CD era onward. Outspan No 1 is nothing less than an ideal distillation of the broad approach to sound creation utilized by the three-ring circus that is Brötzmann, Van Hove, and Bennink, here with the added bonus of Mangelsdorff. Two short numbers, two long, too perfect.
Long Gradus
** 4xCD edition, housed in a rigid outer slipcase Box with a 16 page booklet, with 16 tracks and features all 4 interpretations of Long Gradus, spread across 4 discs** A new longform commissioned work for any ensemble of four similar instruments. The definitive string quartet version of 'Long Gradus' is available as a 2LP and CD, and the collection of all four arrangements (strings, woodwinds, brass & organ, choir & electronics) is presented as the 'Long Gradus: Arrangements' 4CD set.
'Long Grad…
Musique de Courts Métrages, Music of Patrick Bokanowski’s Short Films
From Invisibilia Editions comes a brand-new release of incredible electroacoustic works by the French composer Michèle Bokanowski. Building on the back of their 2019 release, "La Plage", and Recollection GRM's LP, "Rhapsodia / Battements Solaires", issued earlier this year, "Musique de Courts Métrages, Music of Patrick Bokanowski's Short Films", gathers more than 50 years of output across two mesmerizing CDs. Traversing musique concrète, stunning ambient efforts, and brilliant electroacoustic hy…
Building Something Beautiful For Me
*2024 stock* In 1990, the composer Julius Eastman quietly passed away, out of the spotlight, a young man. By his death substance-addicted, homeless and broke, he was unforgivably overlooked in his lifetime. Still, the legacy of creative work he leaves is far more befitting to celebration than destitution. Only a portion of his music remains - a deeply regrettable sidenote to an already heartbreaking story - but this work represents a glorious and beautifully hued depiction of a composer totally …
EX HK
** Edition limited to 150 copies ** While preparing a new edition of Anton Bruhin works in 2008, Alga Marghen discovered some mysterious tapes by Hans Krüsi. Fascinated by the raw and brute contents of those sounds, mixing field recordings of insects, sheep and distant bells with primitive chanting, percussive noises and distorted radio folk songs, Alga Marghen started to conceive one of the most obscure editions in his catalog, an LP to be issued in collaboration with the Swiss Kunstmuseum des…
Japanese Cassette
** Much-Needed Repress, Red Vinyl ** Tom Recchion is a legendary character. He is a world-famous art director, a founding member of the L.A.F.M.S., and was even the drummer for Sonic Youth for a brief period. Since the '70s, Tom has been creating screwed-up music in a dizzying array of formats, from large fully-clothed ensembles to buck naked solo explorations. The Japanese Cassette album falls into the latter category, and it is a head spinning doozy. The music here was originally created in 19…
Frans Zwartjes (2LP)
** Numbered + handmade in an edition of 300 copies only; 180gr 2xLP vinyl in custom-made screen-printed outer ** Frans Zwartjes’ studio remains untouched since his passing in 2017. In early 2023, we returned to the studio and discovered a trunk of unlabelled 3/4 inch tapes, containing completely unheard music by Zwartjes. These works, largely synthesiser-based improvisations for films either unmade or unfinished, were played and recorded by Frans Zwartjes between the late 1960s, through his most…