Reissues
Bunhill Row
500 copies, numbered edition, few available. 1980 was an incredibe year for London’s experimental music scene with many different strands. Recommended Records were rereleasing the first two Faust LP’s, L. Voag had found ‘the way out’, Swell Maps were ‘in occupied Europe’. Throbbing Gristle and other industrialists were giving plenty of live actions. Nurse With Wound had just released their first LP, as had This Heat. The other great LP on Piano Records by Steve Beresford was also on the shelves.…
Music and Words
As a member of British experimental group Morphogenesis, Adam Bohman was no stranger to wayward sound experiments when recording this solo CD. Favoring acoustic sounds over electronic he explores the minute tendrils of sounds coaxed from any number of non-musical instruments. The standout on this Paradigm CD is a cassette piece which the artist made of candid recordings of mundane experiences and conversations, using the stop-start technique to construct a collage of text and environmental sound…
Lookaftering
an amazing album 'Lookaftering' displays a much maturer sound and outlook than the sometimes naïve (in retrospect at least) trappings of the Brit-Folk classic. Produced by Max Richter and featuring guest spots from (deep breath) Joanna Newsom, Devendra Banhart, Adem, Adam Pierce (Mice Parade), Robert Kirby (Nick Drake / etc.), Otto Hauser and Kevin Barker, 'Lookaftering' is a Fairport Convention indebted LP of autumnal grace, dappling the likes of 'Lately' and 'Feet Of Clay' in gloriously evocat…
Tubridge 99 -00
RESTOCKED, reduced price “I think of Akio Suzuki as a kind of magician, perhaps the most charming, engaging artist I’ve seen, Japanese musician and inventor, instrument builder and shaman Akio Suzuki is probably unknown to most of you. But we think his work is utterly captivating and crucial; it deserves a much bigger audience. Akio has been performing, teaching and building instruments for nearly 40 years. His music is simple and pure, and beautifully unworried by the rules of modern music. He …
Oeuvre Désintégrale
Alga Marghen presents one of the most impressive sound poetry anthologies ever published, introducing you to the sound works of the Nouveau Realiste artist, Francois Dufrene. His work, along with that of Gil J Wolman and Brion Gysin, was a strong influence for experimental poets like Henri Chopin, Bernard Heidsieck and Ake Hodell. François Dufrene could be considered the younger of the first generation sound poets. Already in the Lettrist Group when he was only 16 years old, with his own style m…
Revue OU
1st Edition. Alga Marghen proudly presents a new edition of the already historical Henri Chopin's Revue OU. All the original contents (4CDs + book + complete inserts) have also been included here, but presented now in a more modern and flexible way. The first press heavy boxset had been substituted with a lighter and colour slipcase while many important details and info about the contents of this anthology (missing in the original layout) are presented on a new colour obi." Incredible that this …
punctum contra punctum
Aldo Clementi marks out the distance with an absolute refusal to provide narratives, whether of tension resolved, or simply of that logically unending succession of states of being so dear to many of his contemporaries. His materials, whether gathered from a tonal past, generated as a jeu d'esprìt from the names of dedicatees, or produced by a purely abstract process, are projected into a rotational steady state that has no logical end or beginning. (David Osmond-Smith, 2005)
On the occasion of …
arpe eolie
One of the most adventurous composers and performers of the Italian avant garde scene, member of the Gruppo di Improvvisazione Nuova Consonanza, great performer of the music of John Cage, Bertoncini started in the early ‘70s to design spectacular and visually fascinating “sound sculptures”, based on the aeolian sound principle. Amongst his more spectacular installations: Vele, a massive aeolian harps (more than 7 metres high); Venti (winds), for 20 aeolian sound generators and 40 performers; and…
Hotel paral.lel
"Re-mastered at Piethopraxis in Köln, July 2007. "Hotel Paral.lel", originally released in September 1997 by Mego, was Christian Fennesz's debut solo album. Following up from the EP "Instrument", it was an investigation into the sonic possibilties residing in guitar based digital music, recorded just before mobile computing devices became the norm. A far more darker and experimental work than what was to follow. Freeform noise, sliced techno beats and subtle ambient textures create a time…
Fingering an idea
Disc 1: Dexter Music for highland bagpipes. Highland bagpipes: David Watson, Matthew Welch, Michael Mahoney, Brendan O'Rourke, Rob Brazius & Richard Baughman. Disc 2: Sinister - Music for acoustic and electric guitars performed by David Watson. " "Fingering an Idea" (a phrase pulled from a Chris Mann piece) resulted from a Phill Niblock invitation to make a double CD for bagpipe and guitar. A bagpipe CD is a particular challenge. A high beam spatial explorer, it is the kind of unstable ph…
Winter 1972
Alongside noise guitarist Masayuki Takayanagi, the late saxophonist Kaoru Abe was in the vanguard of Japan's new music, articulating an approach to the saxophone that matched extreme velocity with an elastic facility with the instrument's most phantom registers and a sculptural approach to instant composition that saw him carve poignant shapes from massive blocks of silence. Abe died of a heroin overdose on September 9th, 1978 at the age of 29, making 2004 the 27th anniversary of his passing, on…
Solo thursday evening 1972
This is another beautiful live document from the late starcrossed free saxophonist Kaoru Abe's peak period, three solo alto improvisations from '72 that work echoes of weird popular song and folk ghosts into some torrential throat action. Abe was always at his most exploratory when he was all alone in space and this is a thrilling document of a man liberated from any interactive concerns and free to follow the gush of his own muse. Highly recommended.
Solo 1972
Beautiful collection of early solo work from this amazing Japanese saxophonist who can burn personal co-ordinates into cold, black space with alla the harrowing force of Ayler, Haino, Brotz et al. Performances on alto and bass clarinet that combine an intimate, lyrical style with ferocious phantom register evisceration. Highly recommended.
Na-Gi 1997
A CD of minimalist environmental sounds by this Japanese sound-artist Akio Suzuki. This music was recorded in Takano, Tango-cho, the northern-most coast of Kyoto, where I live. The bay surrounded by volcanic rock caves is the place where the mighty sounds of waves of the open sea have their muffled echo. Seawater flows into the hollows in the rock again and again like breathing in and breathing out. Spring water constantly drips in the cave, and now and then the wind from the meadow above the ch…
The tail of the tiger
** VERY LAST COPIES** As is the case with La Monte Young's Theater of Eternal Music, David Hyke's Harmonic Choir and Pauline Oliveros's Deep Listening Band, Roberto Laneri has had a life long penchant for the droning mysteriosa of the Sound Current and with the Prima Materia ensemble he has expressed it in a disciplined, expansive and singular way (Terry Riley). In 1977 an obscure Italian private label issued a record that sounded like it came from outer space. A long and dense trance-inducing d…
On tape from the Judson days
"'On tape from the Judson days. Remember? When you made these things at home, on the best equipment you or your other poor friends could find? Electronic music from the 1960s. And you had that Japanese taperecorder with built-in mike; indeed that was the only piece of furniture on your tatami floor on the Lower East Side that summer of 1961.' This compact disc presents tape music recorded between 1962 and 1963 for the friends meeting once a week in a loft in NYC. The first track, 'Lucinda Pastim…
More from the Judson years Vol. 2
2004 release. Excerpts from the liner notes of More from the Judson Years (Early 60s) Instrumental-Vocal Works Vol. 2, written by Philip Corner: "Everything Max Has" (1964), Max Neuhaus solo, recorded at the ONCE Festival, 1965. "A performance of Max's taking down all of his stuff; tons of equipment filling entire stages." "Big Trombone" (1963), Jim Fulkerson improvisation over tape collage. "Homage to Revere" (1962) for ensemble of copper-bottom kitchen utensils. "Punkt" (1961) for ensemble of …
More from the Judson years Vol. 1
2004 release. "Yet not to forget that extraordinary place where so much of the new and exciting performances at that most interesting time in New York, took place. There was a Theater there; and a place for the first Happenings. An Art Gallery... and later the famous Judson Dance Theater -- the site of Philip Corner's first performance. The concert was in early 1962, January 2nd, to be exact. Excerpts from the liner notes of volume one of More from the Judson Years, Early 60s, written by Philip …
Metal meditations
"Metal Meditations is the culmination of many years experience and experiment with the properties of resonant metal objects, whether intended for music for not." Philip Corner. One side is taken from a 1974 performance at Merce Cunningham's studio, performed by David Behrman (electronics and performer) & others. There is also a 1975 performance with Bill Fontana and Corner ("long metal pipe with active microphone) as well as a short version from the Avant Garde Festival in Cambridge, MA, 1978.
Gong +
2002 release. Gong + presents three previously-unpublished compositions by Philip Corner recorded in New York City, 1974. "Metal Meditations with Listening Center," a 29-minute long piece, is a collaboration between Philip Corner and Bill Fontana. At that time Bill Fontana was very interested in the resonance properties of every object, putting his ear to everything, and sometimes recording what he called "Listening Centers," a microphone placed in a resonating space (for example a jar, or a pip…