Reissues
Marsupilami
Esoteric Recordings are pleased to announce the release of Marsupilami's debut album from 1970. This unique masterpiece is a much sought-after collector's item originally released on the Transatlantic label. Initially a folk-based group, the band evolved into one of the most adventurous, if unsung, progressive bands of the early 1970s, producing two stunningly original albums. Featuring a line-up of brothers Fred and Leary Hasson (lead vocals and harmonica and keyboards respectively), Dave Laver…
Nowhere: Short Pieces 1983 to 2003
20-year collection from the pioneer of absolute concrète music. Nowhere: Short Pieces 1983 to 2003, is the centerpiece to this prolific artist's catalog. Housed in a stunning black on black embossed box. Released as a cooperative operation from Blossoming Noise and Gender-less Kibbutz.
box is stupid
LAST COPIES remastered from the original dat master-tapes by tommi keränen under the supervision of t.mikawa. 40 page colour booklet with extensive liner-notes by fumio kosakai, t.mikawa, otomo yoshihide and jim sauter. each disc packaged in an individual wallet cover with original cassette artwork. booklet and discs housed in a solid box. limited editon of 500 copies"i love incapacitants more than anything. my love for them is reaffirmed as i listen again to their many cassette releases. they’r…
The Great Learning
The Great Learning plays on the title of the influential score of the same name by the radical 60's composer and musician Cornelius Cardew, who brought music and visual art closely together in this work. The Great Learning [1969–1970] owe their visual eloquence to his practice as a graphic artist, and his improvisational and group work was made with an awareness and connection to Flux art. Facsimile of manuscript, size 420x263mm, 23 pages
We Only Want The Earth
2024 restock. Long out of print, subtitled "the Peoples' Liberation Music Tapes & other Songs", the tracks from this CD come from a rare collection of Cornelius Cardew's live recordings and studio sessions made between 1973-78. Plans to issue them on vinyl LP in the 70s never came to fruition (although small numbers of cassettes circulated). The original songs and arrangements are of the 70s and so reflect that time. Some people find it difficult to accept that revolutionary words can be set to …
Treatise (Prague Version, 1967)
Featured work: "Treatise (Live Recording, Prague 1967)." Performed by: QUaX Ensemble (Petr Kotik, Director). "This performance of Cardew's monumental 193-page graphic score 'Treatise' was recorded live in Prague in 1967 by the Czech QUaX Ensemble, directed by composer/flutist/conductor Petr Kotik. This historical recording offers a unique perspective to hear 'Treatise' as interpreted by Cardew's contemporaries. Kotik met Cardew in Warsaw in 1962, and they began exchanging scores by mail, includi…
A.M.A.R.Y.L.L.I.S.
Valerio Tricoli - Amaryllis is the second (I think) release of altered field recordings done at the birthday party of Maria-Amaryllis, this one her third. The previous was a favorite of mine a couple years back. This one sounds far more processed, with party activities only creeping in here and there through a dense organ-y drone. Still, rather nice and dreamy and, appropriately, childlike. Limited to 222 handnumbered copies
Spaced
1996's SPACED sees the release of long-forgotten tapes that Soft Machine had made in 1969 to accompany a staged "happening" in London. The seven pieces are improvisations of varying length, centered on the electric piano and organ of Mike Ratledge, ... Full Descriptionthe electric bass of Hugh Hopper, and the drumming of Robert Wyatt. The recordings also feature appearances by saxophonist Brian Hopper. Ratledge and Hugh Hopper pioneered innovations that added depth and breadth to the sounds o…
Grides
Previously unreleased live concert from 10/25/70 & DVD from their final European tour w/Robert Wyatt in '71, a multi camera crew shot 20 minute set. Both feature the classic SM quartet line up of Wyatt, Dean, Ratledge & Hopper.
Heart Food
Now available in miniature replica gatefold LP style sleeve. On Sill's 2nd album, rather than using an outside arranger for the strings (as she did on her previous album), she did all of the work herself. Her lack of formal training and the immense amount of orchestral overdubs certainly would have made such an outing a hardship for anyone. But the results are outstanding with echoes of Bach supporting the stellar early 70s Laurel Canyon singer/songwriter melodies. The supporting cast of top L.A…
Kissing The Contemporary Bliss
For over 30 years troubadour walier DAN IRETON has called upon the spirit of 78 shellac blues n' psychedelic Stooges n' Velvets to fuel his guttural, pure soul ethos of the song. Hints at the classic forms of Dylan's Blood On The Tracks, Buckley's Starsailor & the celestial fug of Sun Ra' third-eye vision to create an approach untraveled yet increasingly influential. Kicks up the most outward bound & staggering approaches to Gus Cannon's "Walk Right In" & Robert Johnson's "Stones In My Passway" …
Four Principles On Ireland And Other Pieces (1974)
...and Other Pieces" In 1975 when "Four Principles" was released, Cardew was comfortably within his third stylistic phase of musical development. Unlike the groundbreaking experimental activities introduced through his most famous pieces - "Treatise" & "Great Learning" - the music on here marked a repudiation of the musical avant-garde which Cardew himself had championed in England. 13 solo piano pieces represent a pivotal time in his work & can be heard is a return to the music Cardew knew & un…
At The Cliffs Of River Rhine
When the band Agitation Free came together in 1967 as a result of the merging of two Berlin rock groups, one of the most interesting groups in a dawning independent German music scene was created. With their improvisations between rock, jazz and new music, Agitation Free soon relegated to the not so flattering category of Krautrock made musical forays into areas that few of their fellow German musicians had ever penetrated. At a time when most in Germany were still orienting themselves as closel…
Last
Gorgeous new edition of the third release from this amazing German band. The band had particular popularity in France for some reason. After the band's break up this was released by the French Barclay label and became quite a rarity. It was resurrected into the digital age some years ago by Spalax. This new remastered set comes with a bonus track and a sexy digipak. A great documentation of an ever changing band.
Painting Petals On Planet Ghost
Digital version of the out of print lp... debut recording from Italy's Opalio brothers (My Cat Is An Alien) and Ramona Ponzini. An esoteric and mesmerizing trip through space, minimalism, and emotion. Each track recorded at a different mystical location in the Western Alps, and centered around Ramona's beautiful vocals, all of which are sung in traditional japanese. Maurizio & Roberto add sparse accompaniment by means of toy piano, alien keyboard tones, antique accordion, percussion, tape effect…
s/t
This new Bokanowski CD offers us two previously edited pieces (but now sold out) : 'Trois Chambres d'Inquiétude' (1975-1976) (previously on Elevator Bath) and 'Tabou' (1983-1984) (previously on Metamkine) and an unpublished piece 'Phone Variations' (1986-1988)“Why concrete music is so attractive to me, as opposed to written music... To write music implies that an idea or a thought is at the origins of the composition and that the final thing is the sound rendering of this thought. The sound is a…
La Peur And Co (1958-1979)
A collection of early text-sound compositions: "Dynamisme intégral", (1966), "Présence du Soleil" (1971), "Dentales soufflées" (1979), "Le Peur" (1958/1969). Edition of 400 copies. "The works of sound poet Henri Chopin can hardly be called spoken word, but are rather sound collages created with vocal noises, often without the use of words or even the sounds of syllables. The 37-minute title track, "La Peur" (The Fear), recorded in 1958 and 1969, is one of Chopin's more intense and formidable pie…
Back and Forth Exhibition Sound
The third Joe Jones archival CD release on this label. A single 31-minute recording of said exhibition, August 31st, 1985. Jones' mechano-constructs whirring/clanking all the while, generally refusing to sit still. Back cover shots display several motor-agitated automatons with single beaters attached to end(s), pre flail. Heard: motorik-accent hand drum, metallic ping, bells, possibly glockenspiel (?), distant melodic informations, presumably of aleatoric/wind-based selection. Joe Jones' music …
Andy Warhol Attentat Sound
A collage consisting of sounds recorded between 7PM October 11th and November 12th, 1986 in New York City by the 'New York City Audio/Visual Group' led by Al Hansen. Features Al, Lisa Cieslik, Georg (ist Warhol!), Suzanne Zierold, Dieter Hebben, Peter Kleinertz, Hanjo S., Nicole Hundertmark, and others. Figures like Gerard Malanga, Angus MacLise, Valerie Solanas, Warhol, and others are roasted/honored (the tone is always a little hard to suss) in the form of chants like 'Long Live Andy Panda', e…
Northwest Passage: The Birth of Portland\'s D.I.Y. Culture
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Pacific Northwest witnessed a surge of idiosyncratic creativity that, for a time, banished the slack-jawed banality of mainstream music and art to the shabby bargain basement of the cultural wasteland. Countless young men and women turned their backs on the hollow blather generated in corporate boardrooms, producing their own music and art with a rebellious, energetic glee. Northwest Passage: The Birth of Portland's D.I.Y. Culture is an independent film…