Reissues
Musiques électroniques en France 1974-1984
With Lard Free, Gilbert Artman, Heldon, Richard Pinhas, Camizole, Verto, Video-Aventures, Pascal Comelade, David Cunningham, Victor Nubla. This compilation aims at showing the pionneers of electronic music who are little known or completely anonymous for the majority of public. In the early 70’s and thanks to the commercialization of the first financially accessible syntheisizers, appeared, and it is often not really acknowledged, some adventurous French musicians who decided to adopt this intru…
3 experimental short films
Austrian artist Valie Export has been an influential and provocative figure on the international art scene for over three decades. Her practice includes film, video, photography, text and performance. Initially expanding the Actionist project to confront a complex feminist critique of the social and political body, her works achieve a compelling fusion of the visceral and the conceptual. (Electronic Arts Intermix) 'Mann & Frau & Animal' 1970-73. 'Remote Remote' 1973. 'Syntagma' 1984.
Walls of sound II
'Music in Fifths' (1969) from Phillip Glass. 'Pendulum Music'(1968) from Steve Reich. 'Dorian Reeds' (1964) from Terry Riley. '1 + 1' (1968) from Phillip Glass. 'Reed Phase' (1967) from Steve Reich. 'Walls of Sound' is about what I call: 'static music' - music that isn't semantic, gestured, or narrative, that doesn't move or change atmospherically, and isn't dramatic or has a development in the traditional European sense. If it changes it does it very slowly. The emphasis lies on the 'aural scul…
Birds + Machines
Co-founder of Pogus with Al Margolis, Gen Ken Montgomery is often unfairly disregarded when assessing the history of radical music in the last half-century. This collection – another clarification of a unendingly probing creativity – examines works from the decade in which the American composer’s terminology was first met by yours truly, at that time seriously hooked in the unearthing of entrancing materials of post-industrial derivation. But don’t let this piece of news mislead you: Montgomery’…
s/t
"Triangles offers you more of the powerbook electronics sounds we're all digging on so much, and from speaking comparatively from the field as it stands today, Triangles sounds quite good, really amazing, in fact. Despite falling into the, dammit, start saying it -- 'melancholy electronics,' hole that you clearly need filled, Triangles stands on it's own. Need more? Try this -- Triangles occupies the space between powerbook extrapolations (quite reminiscent of the sole person in America w…
Menagerie - Beach singularity - Vocalise
Releasing electro acoustic music in this country has historically, always been a dedicated persuit. With no national record labels and very few electronic music studios to support this music, the UK has always lagged behind its counterparts in both the United States and throughout east and west Europe. Trevor started releasing his own music in 1973 and continues to do so to this day. Much of this CD was originally privately released in 1979. Whilst other maverick British composers (Nyman, Bryars…
Red bird - Anticredos
Extremely great reissue of the previously-semi-available-but-not-so-for-quite-a-l ong-time October Music CD (which itself was a reissue of the 1977 LP on Wishart's own Yes imprint, along with the piece 'Anticredos' for 6 voices, from an LP on Hyperion, 1982). Recent developments in Wishart's street cred (contributing to Or Some Computer Music Issue One, being name-dropped by Richie Devine on several occasions, Aphex Twin's use of CDP) seem to suddenly make Trevor... relevant to a younger set of …
Journey into Space
York University's music department houses one of the UK's first-ever
electronic music studios, and during the early '70s, it was a hotbed of
creative activity. Much of the released output from the studio at this
time revolved around the work of the dynamic composer Trevor Wishart. Journey Into Space
was his first release, composed between 1970 and 1972, and was
privately-pressed (shortly before the formation of YES records), as two
separate LPs in 1973. (The CD cover amalgamates the two or…
Voiceprints
Master composer Trevor Wishart shapes recordings of the human voice into a majestic, sonic extravaganza. With satire, sympathy, and his extraordinary talent with sound, Wishart gives us an audio panorama of the world today through the voices of many different people, famous and unknown. You'll hear the voice of Margaret Thatcher as a political cartoon, a touching portrait of Princess Diana, the powerful resonance of Martin Luther King's well-known words, the crackly voice of Neil Armstrong, the …
Music for Tinguely
This is volume 5 of Omega Point's newly-reissued Obscure Tape Music of Japan series, available in a limited edition of 1000 copies, also with an LP version in a limited edition of 300 copies. Toshi Ichiyanagi is a well-renowned Japanese avant-garde composer who made brilliant pieces of tape music. Most of his works have not been issued on CD, or have only been issued in very small editions. This CD consists of three of his obscure tape works. "Music for Tinguely" (1963) was made from the jun…
Fantastic glissando
It's 1969, and Tony Conrad wants to take you Higher. Celebrated for the thrilling roar of his amplified violin, Conrad is a founding father of 'minimalism' and a giant in the American soundscape. Now Conrad's own Audio ArtKive imprint presents the first in a series of releases that reveal the wild breadth of his 40-year career, including field recordings, piano compositions, film soundtracks and more. Fantastic Glissando (1969) is a series of (d)evolving electronic compositions created with sine…
Sweetly doing nothing
with a 30 year practice in sonic explorations – including, record manipulation, live tape loops, free improvisation, found and invented instruments - tom recchion is one of the world’s most established and finest experimental artist and musician. based in los angeles, tom recchion has co-founded the legendary music entity lafms (los angeles free music society), collaborated with david toop, christian marclay, oren ambarchi, keiji haino, max eastley, rova, john duncan, smegma (just to name a few)…
Organ and Silence
File under: minimalism, conceptual sound art, organ music. A music whose talking about, as the author writes in the disc notes, 'the importance of silence in music'. This work is conceived not 'for organ' but, really, for 'organ and silence', as the silence is a founding part of it, and it's not possible to give it up. It's the tentative, as the author explain 'to permit as much silence as possible, without allowing the music to actually stop'. Tom Johnson is one of the masters of minimalism,…
Music for 88
Simplicity and clarity have always been among Tom Johnson's chief concerns as a composer. That concern led him to research number theory, particularly by Pascal, Fermat, and Euclid, and these sources suggested musical structures somewhat more complicated than those that he had used before. Music for 88 is the result of these researches. It contains nine sections (six of which are on this recording), each of which is a musical demonstration of a mathematical phenomenon.
Kientzy plays Johnson
In Kientzy Loops, the accompanying loop is a mix of six alto saxophones played in continuous blowing, while the principal lines are played on alto saxophone, except for the third section, played on baritone. The piece, premiered at the auditorium of the ADAC in Paris, was awarded a French national prize in the Victoires de la musique as the best piece of contemporary music for the year 2000. We are indebted to our friend Marc Chemillier for La Tortue de mer. As a mathematician Chemillier became …
An Hour For Piano
"First, the booklet notes. If you pine for Gertrude Stein speaking circles around herself, meaning what she doesn’t mean, and not meaning what she means, you’ll probably like Tom Johnson’s non-sort-of-explanation of his magnum keyboard opus, An Hour For Piano. The composer prefers that you don’t read his notes while listening to the music. In fact, don’t read them before you play the CD for the first time. Listen to the piece first. Then, if you’re feeling artsy, put on the CD again and read the…
Hourouurin
The Japanese underground band Johari was create in 1990 by the magic duo Asahito Nanjo (High Rise) and Makoto Kawabata (Acid Mothers Temple) and will became later, in 1995, this shamanistic avant-garde formation Toho Sara. “Hourouurin” is their third opus, after two albums on PSF “Eastern most” (1995) and “Mei Jou Tan Sho” (1999) and some live performances in Europe during the years 1996 and 1997. “Hourouurin” is a weird unit who attempt to achieve a mystic fusion of ethnic music and rock, accor…
Pond
Life meets art. Born of a long written corresPondence and a mutual affection for frogs between David Myers (the artist formerly known as Arcane Device) and Tod Dockstader which eventually spawned this programme of electronic & concrete pieces derived almost entirely from field (and swamp) recordings of frogs - choral and solo processed, manipulated and organised in a million ways. This release also marks the welcome return of Tod Dockstader to the lists; it's his first large-scale new published …
Apocalypse
Tod Dockstader's musique concrete turns out to have a surprising relevance to music created decades later; he's been described as "one of the godfathers of Nurse With Wound, and a distant cousin of rap and techno" (Option). Craig Anderton writes that Dockstader was one of the few to master "the art of assembling tape-recorded sounds and painstakingly splicing, cutting, dubbing, manipulating and mixing to create final compositions," then adds: "If you think that sounds similar to the procedures u…
Quatermass
Seminal musique concrete recordings from the early 60s that were first issued on CD in '92/'93. This CDs offer all of Dockstader's principal solo works, including unreleased works and material that has been out of print on LP for over a decade (spread over 3 LPs on the Owl label). Dockstader deserves shelf space next to Schaeffer, Henry, Stockhausen, Varése, etc. -- historically vital, minutely detailed experimental electronic music and tape composition. "My choice of the term 'Organized Sound' …