Reissues
Snaketime Series
This really is a treat, a re-issue of the incredibly rare debut LP from legendary blind outsider Moondog. Originally released back in 1956 on the musician's own Moondog Recordings imprint, this incredible album showcases the man at his way-out best, blending Eastern instruments and ethnic music with American exotica to come up with a sound which is impossible to categorise. A mostly self-taught musician, Moondog (real name Louis Thomas Hardin) performed in the streets of New York City for most o…
Playing Moondog\'s Music
this rare 1955 set of recordings features the composer in collaboration with a brass section, although one of its defining aspects is the extensive influence of Native American musics on its rhythmic makeup. From the irrepressibly unconventional jibber-jabber of 'Rabbit Hop' to the tribal weirdness of 'Single Foot', this could only have come from the pen of Moondog. 'Dog Trot' is a more conventional swingtime piece, offering an oasis of accepted logic in an otherwise wildly outside-the-box set o…
The Viking Of Sixth Avenue
re-released on its original label, Honest Jon's, with new and improved gatefold card wallet sleeve packaging. Poet, composer, street musician and cosmologist Moondog (Louis Thomas Hardin, 1916-1999) learned rhythm from American Indians and counterpoint from J.S. Bach. Many of his recordings feature instruments he built himself: trimba, yukh, tuji, oo. Sometimes you can hear in the background the streets of New York, where Moondog often slept. In addition, he was blind, due to an accident when he…
I Know A Chord Buried Into The Ground And A Tongue On A Cloud
Self-released Japan-only album from the higher-mind duo of Shizuo Uchida and Hirotomo Hasegawa aka Hasegawa-Shiuzo. Previous releases on PSF and Tiliqua have orbited the O-mind with alla the force of an octopus in zero gravity, with strings and ethnic drone instruments floating in waves of macro/micro bliss. This latest release ups the ante even more, with a more aggressively nuanced attack on post Taj Mahal Travellers group mind aesthetics and it makes for one of the best contemporary communal …
Trio In Concert
Amazing music by one of the French piano legend Georges Arvanitas, in the company of George's fantastic rhythm duo of Charles Saudrais on drums and Jacky Samson on bass
Metal Machine Music
25th Anniversary reissue in clear jewel-case with 12-page booklet. Few records have alienated audiences like Lou Reed’s 1975 double album Metal Machine Music. Each side bore a single track lasting exactly 16 minutes and one second. There were no drums, no singing, and no songs. Instead, waves of shrieking guitar feedback created a brutal sonic assault which, thanks to the locked groove at the end of side four, was literally never–ending. Deleted by RCA after two weeks on sale, the album attract…
Fragments
Recorded in Berlin, 11/14/74 as their "final reunion" a loose jamming session featuring various members of the groups' different periods: Christoph Franke, Michael Hoenig, Lutz Ulbrich, etc. Like many acts that suffer from sounding a bit stiff in the studio, the live experience is the way to hear `em let their hair down and show how rock music can be dangerous in a way that other musical genres are often not. Trad Gras Och Stenar are another example of a band far more visceral and exciting…
Keyboard Study 2 / Initiative (+Systèmes)
A split release between Terry Riley and French avant-garde composer Pierre Marietan that was recorded in Paris on September 30th and October 1st, 1969. Riley's piece is a 24-minute work for 2 pianos (Gérard Frémy and Martine Joste of the GERM ensemble - Groupe d'Etude et Réalisation Musicale). Marieten's piece is performed by the full GERM ensemble including Philippe Blachette (violin), Philippe Drogoz (double bass), Louis Roquin (trumpet), Chantal Lemaire (cello), Gérard Frémy (piano), Martine …
Catalyse
Reissue of the original 1970 album on the BYG label (one of the label's few entries in the rock field), and a classic period piece, like Gong at their heaviest. Ame Son is the pioneer group of French Underground born at the end of the 60s. The band is made up to two former members of Banana Moon, Daevid Allen's band on his arrival in France in 1967. Their music was harsh and scathing with vocals in both French & English, sometime with an outside layer of 'formal beauty', rapidly devastated by st…
The Other Sides Of Agitation Free
When Burghard Rausch and Michael Hoenig left Agitation Free in 1974 and the group was as good as dead, Michael Günther and Gustl Lütjens didn't want to give up so easily and made a few attempts in the studio with new people from their environment in autumn and winter of that year. Thanks to Manfred Opitz and Gustl Lütjens, some quite jazzy pieces came out, but Vertigo rejected them as "not for sale". On "The other sides" you can hear them for the first time, supplemented by excerpts from the pol…
Allez Teia
Heldon were one of the quintessential European progressive groups of the 70s. Led by Richard Pinhas (and assorted backing guests), they released 7 albums from 1974 to 1979, all reissued in the early 90s by Cuneiform (inferior French editions can be found on Spalax). Pinhas went on to record a series of solo albums under his own name, also to be found on Cuneiform. Allez Teia was the second Heldon album from 1975 -- it features Pinhas's trademark instrumental sound: waves of distorted post-Frippi…
Cosmic Tones For Mental Therapy / Art Forms Of Dimensions Tomorr
Much of what was unique about the original Pink Floyd's sound - the use of echo and piercing organ for musical effect - is present here, Floyd fans take note. Wonder if Syd Barrett had been exposed to Sun Ra's music. "Cosmic Tones" sounds like a 20th Century space-inflected chamber music quite unlike jazz, though it contains elements of it. The music attempts to paint pictures in an abstract fashion unencumbered by notions of traditional musical form. Instruments enter, contribute to the picture…
Chanting the Light of Foresight
a beautiful album, Riley composed the pieces on this album for the legendary ROVA Saxophone Quartet. The work is based on the Taín Bó Cuailnge ("The Cattle Raid of Cooley"), an invasion of Ulster by the armies of Medb and Ailill. Long out of print
Electro-Acoustic Solo Works 1984-95
Electro-Acoustic Solo Works (1984-95) collected assorted compositions of musique concrete and interactive computer music (Chatterlings of april 1995 for sampler and drums, and an excerpt from Aivilik Rays of may 1990, originally more than one hour long).
Early Piano Works
For each ecstatic instant / We must an anguish pay / In keen and quivering ratio / To the ecstasy." It almost seems as if Emily Dickinson could have been describing the early piano music of Morton Feldman when she wrote those lines nearly one-hundred-and-fifty years ago. Certainly, the uncommonly short, acutely concentrated, unadorned and vulnerable pieces Feldman composed between 1950 and 1964 each span just an “ecstatic instant” — a brief, heightened experience measured not according to time b…
A Blind Man's Gallery Of Mirrors
All tracks are live recordings of experimental music from Freedom In A Vacuum Festivals, held since 1991 at the Music Gallery in Toronto.
Tap Dancing in the Sand
A selection of pieces by the great musical pioneer Robert ashley performed by the Dutch Ensemble MAE. Some of the works were especially written for the Ensemble in the last few years, and have never been recorded before, namely the title work 'Tap Dancing in the Sand' featuring ashley's voice and 'Hidden Similarites'. Other works presented on the CD are 'Outcome Inevitable', 'in memoriam Esteban Gomez' and 'She was a Visitor'.
Goebbels Heart
Goebbels Heart is a kind of compilation disc, pulling together portions of early-'80s recordings by this duo originally released on the small German label Riskant. At this point in his career, Goebbels (who would later release more atmospheric and experimental albums on ECM) seems to be very much under the influence of composers such as Carla Bley, including the utilization of European workers' songs (Hans Eisler here). Goebbels plays mostly keyboards, both acoustic and electric, while Harth (ye…
Locus Solus
Reissue of the Rift 1983 DBL LP. Locus Solus was made up of small groups of Zorn's closest contemporaries at the time: Christian Marclay, Peter Blegvad, Arto Lindsay, Anton Fier, Wayne Horvitz, Ikue Mori, M.E. Miller. Subtitled "In search of improvised song form," this is supremely disorienting sonic chatter, but still quite listenable; watching this one waft though your speaker cones can't help but give you a feeling of superiority towards the human race's numerous inferior forms.
Live in Bremen
The groundbreaking UK band Nucleus were one of the very first jazz/rock fusion groups, forming in 1969 and releasing their first album in 1970. During their lifetime, the band recorded 13 albums for labels like Vertigo and Capitol, among others. The band was founded by trumpeter Ian Carr. He recruited musicians for the band in the autumn of 1969. The timing was perfect: the world was ready for Nucleus and other early bands who were combining the energy and excitement of rock with jazz instrument…