Reissues
The World Music Theatre of Jon Appleton
**2020 stock** This 1974 recording by electro-acoustic music composer Jon Appleton is designed to take the listener to different musical landscapes. Appleton notes differences in context that will make the music more and less effective (“not everything I intended will be heard by the listener because no two listeners share the same aural experiences…because we are continually expanding our aural vocabulary, the sounds used assume a different significance as time passes”). Liner notes contain a b…
Visions - Music for Orchestra, 2 Pianos and Computer-Generated Tape
**2020 stock** This 1979 record is a five-movement composition for large chamber orchestra by David Cope. First presented by the Santa Cruz Chamber Symphony in 1978, the work attempts to demonstrate the relationships between sound and physical space and to translate them to recorded sound as well as performance. The tapes in the piece were composed at Stanford’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and were “spliced” digitally rather than physically. Liner notes contain drawings of the way that Co…
Israeli Electroacoustic Music
**2020 stock** Israeli Electroacoustic Music collects the works of six musicians from varied backgrounds, all recognized for their musical activity in electronic music and in Israel at the time of the album’s recording in 1981. These composers exemplify atonal 20th century music and musique concrete in a mixture of acoustic and electronic instrumentation, ranging from album producer Robin Julian Heifetz’s dark and frantic A Clear and Present Danger (which “attempts to symbolize the fear of a mot…
To Kill a Sunrise and La Ruche
**2020 stock** Turkish-born musician and composer Ilhan Mimaroglu worked extensively with electronic (tape) music. The two programmatic pieces paired here are "To Kill a Sunrise," a dirge subtitled "Requiem for Those Shot in the Back" with words borrowed from a poem by Guatemalan guerilla poet Marco Antonio Flores, composed in Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (New-York, N.Y., 1974). And "La Ruche" composed at Groupe de Recherches Musicales (Paris, France, 1968) an experiment of reminis…
Navajo Dedications
**2020 stock** This 1976 Folkways release by David Cope presents modern music based on Cope’s intensive research into—and respect for—Navajo ceremonies, and Navajo music in particular. Ranging from pieces for large chamber ensemble to a work scored for a single performer, the four compositions are unique interpretations of Native American Indian myths and culture. The liner notes include detailed explanations of the inspiration, organization, and arrangement of each of these complex works.
This …
Mi specchio e rifletto
Tip - this is stunning! Since their launch in mid-2000s, the New York based imprint, Unseen Worlds, has continued to set an incredibly high bar through the earth-shaking quality of their releases. As dedicated to historical artists and works as they are to those emerging in the present, they’ve always taken their time, slipping things into the world with remarkable care, that leave humble tectonic shifts in their wake. After an absolutely incredible couple of years with brilliant albums from Lau…
Vill Så Gärna Tro - vol. 1
Great soundtrack by Bundrick and Nash. Probably most known for featuring Bob Marley on guitar. Recorded while he lived in Stockholm, Sweden between March and July in 1971.
Vill Så Gärna Tro - vol. 2
Great soundtrack by Bundrick and Nash. Probably most known for featuring Bob Marley on guitar. Recorded while he lived in Stockholm, Sweden between March and July in 1971.
Vanity Records CD Box-sets bundle
This bundle gathers together the four recently issued Vanity Records Box Sets, and includes 27 CDs in total:Various - Vanity Records 'Music, Tapes & Demos' (11CD Box)Various - Vanity Records 'Demos' (6CD Box)Various - The Vanity Box Vol. 1 (5CD Box)Tolerance - Vanity (5CD Box)Here's details about the contents of each box-set:Various - Vanity Records 'Music, Tapes & Demos' (11CD Box)CD-1 & CD-2 Various - Music 1 & 2Music (or Musik) was a compilation originally released in 1981 as a double vinyl b…
The Vanity Box Vol.1
The Vanity Box Vol. 1 present an anthology of releases by legendary Japanese DIY label Vanity, active in the late '70s and early '80s. The box includes 5 CDs which offer the following contents:CD-1 R.N.A. Organism - R.N.A. Organism Meets P.O.P.O.(Vanity 0006, originally released in 1980)This is the only album by the anonymous unit, R.N.A. Organism. The album is based on a cassette tape which was airmailed from London. It also happens to be the first group produced by Kaoru Sato of EP-4. R.N.A. O…
Vanity Records 'Demos'
This box-set collects a series of recordings recently discovered in Agi Yuzuru's archives and never released before. It offers further insights about legendary Japanese cult DIY label Vanity Records and some of their groups. The box-set includes the following contents:CD-1 Densei Kwan - P' (unpublished)An unpublished album from the cassette tapes owned by Aki Joe. The Densei Kwan's crashing style of Pocket Planetaria (CD-5) recurs in a more intense form with increased compositional power. An alb…
Vanity Records 'Music, Tapes & Demos'
As per title, The Vanity Records 'Music, Tapes & Demos' box-set features a selection of releases culled from the catalogue of legendary Japanese cult DIY label Vanity Records, along with never before released demos recently discovered in Agi Yuzuru's archives. The box includes 11 CDs which offer the following contents:CD-1 & CD-2 Various - Music 1 & 2Music (or Musik) was a compilation originally released in 1981 as a double vinyl box. It is a selection of thirteen artists’ tracks that were chose…
New Grass
Albert Ayler's 1969 album New Grass has been misunderstood from the day of its release. The album finds Ayler experimenting with soul music and digging back into his R&B roots (he started his career playing saxophone with Chicago bluesman Little Walter), fusing it with the avant-garde free jazz (the one element of the record which garnered consistent praise) and adding the vocals of Rose Marie McCoy, The Soul Singers and Ayler himself. As if predicting the divisiveness of the record to follow, A…
Armitage Road
**Seminal Spiritual Jazz from South Africa, 1970. Officially licensed and re-mastered re-issue**. With a unique sound founded on a persuasive mix of American and African jazz, Armitage Road, originally released in 1970, was the only studio recording released by South Africa’s Heshoo Beshoo Group. As a highly prized collector’s item, a re-issue and re-appraisal of this lost gem from the apartheid era has been long overdue. Heshoo Beshoo loosely translates from the inter-tribal lingo of the townsh…
Clima-X
Fantastic debut LP from France's pioneer avant-electronic unit, Art & Technique. Clima-X was originally released in 1981 by Hi-Tech Records. Haunting obscure minimal electronic sounds, ambient and atmospheric ventures, minimal wave with some ethnic elements. And excellent use of rhythm boxes, sound generators and strange vocals, reminiscent of 23 Skidoo's "7 Songs", early Muslimgauze or O Yuki Conjugate's sound.
Abstract Forms
**300 copies** Abstract Forms is a selection of rare as yet unreleased in any physical format Sandro Brugnolini recordings from the late '80s and early '90s. The sixteen electronic tracks were produced for television background use or synchronization and, thanks to their great intensity and suspense, are still perfect to be scored in any number of thriller sequences, connecting smooth jazz memoirs filtered with machines overplayed on videogame sounding backgrounds. The majority of these experime…
My Greatest Love
LP version. We Release Jazz present a reissue from Geneva's Boillat Thérace Quintet, the My Greatest Love album, featuring bebop and hard-bop legend Benny Bailey and available for the first time since 1975. Galvanized by the creation of the Montreux Jazz Festival in the late '60s and lively local scenes, jazz music was healthy and booming in Switzerland in the 1970s. One band that beautifully captured this energy was Jean-François Boillat and RaymondThérace's Boillat Thérace Quintet whose self-t…
Far And Wee
Black Editions present a reissue of Kazuo Imai's far and wee, originally released in 2004. Kazuo Imai is one of the few artists to traverse both Japan's early avant-garde and free jazz movements. Though he began performing in the 1970s, his 2004 P.S.F. album far and wee was only the second under his name. In a series of thrilling acoustic guitar improvisations -- Imai's playing crackles with dynamic tension and physicality as well as a subtlety and nuance that reveals him as one of the instrumen…
Noch sind wir ein Wort
I would like to refer to Annette Bik’s project Bach gedoubelt, which was the origin of this piece, putting Bach’s b-minor partita, BWV 1002, in direct context with contemporary musical comments. Bach wrote so-called “Double” movements to the standard dances Allemanda, Corrente, Sarabande and Tempo di Borea, connected to the original as a kind of variation. Annette Bik commissioned four composers to write such “Double” movements to the four main movements of the Partita. This lead to four contemp…
Süden: Gastón Solnicki on Mauricio Kagel
111 cyclists reach famed opera house Teatro Colón to welcome Mauricio Kagel (1931-2008), one of the great composers of the 20th Century, who was born in Argentina, but left the country and settled in Germany in 1957. However, his adventurous music remained an inspiration to a number of forward-thinking Argentinean musicians, and in 2006 he returned to Buenos Aires for a Kagel festival, where he was to direct a major concert by the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, but also worked with a group of young …