Klang Bilder
**Hardcover edition**In the late 1950s, avant-garde musicians were exploring new ways of expressing their experimental compositions in writing. Searching for a universal language that would reach far beyond music, they no longer considered the traditional system of musical notation as sufficient. By progressing into electronic music, as well as by linking music and performance, they blurred the boundaries between different genres and inevitably changed the notation of music. Karlheinz Stockhause…
Complete Piano Works
This release brings all of Morton Subotnick’s piano music together on one album for the first time, along with four first recordings, all supervised by the composer.Liquid Strata is an important work in Subotnick’s oeuvre. Here the electronic component is what he calls “ghost electronics,” and this is the first of 11 Ghost Pieces. In these works, Subotnick sought to address technology in a way that highlights rather than compromises the inherent features and strengths of acoustical instruments. …
Dispersion
"Working with forces unknown to me has always been an exciting challenge,” says Elliott Sharp, “especially when those forces are in the form of younger musicians, highly skilled and enthusiastic.” For his work with the musicians of the Veni Academy, he chose three previously composed works that would be easily adaptable to a large ensemble whose instrumentation was not the result of prior design plus one newly composed for the occasion. The chosen pieces were based on well-defined processes that…
Traces of Eternity: of What Is Yet To Be
**300 copies** "There have been quite a few releases of Antoine Beuger’s music over the past several years and it’s an odd, and very pleasurable thing to consider them en masse. On the one hand, his music is so diaphanous, so air-suffused that you’d think it might be difficult (not to mention unnecessary) to differentiate them mentally. On the other, they’re always very different. There’s that old AMM aphorism: “as alike or unalike as trees” that conveys something of my feelings about Beuger’s w…
Now Is The Moment To Learn Hope
**300 copies** "There have been quite a few releases of Antoine Beuger’s music over the past several years and it’s an odd, and very pleasurable thing to consider them en masse. On the one hand, his music is so diaphanous, so air-suffused that you’d think it might be difficult (not to mention unnecessary) to differentiate them mentally. On the other, they’re always very different. There’s that old AMM aphorism: “as alike or unalike as trees” that conveys something of my feelings about Beuger’s w…
Secrets Of The Blue Bag
**500 copies** British experimental musician, composer, performer and producer Anthony Moore was a founding member of Slap Happy and has worked with Henry Cow, Kevin Ayers, and Pink Floyd among other great names in the British scene. In 1971 he moved to Hamburg, Germany, and worked in the boiling experimental scene of the city. As a result, two LPs were issued on Polydor Germany in 1971 and 1972, right before forming Slap Happy with old school pal Peter Blegvad and Dagmar Krause.Secrets of the B…
Moments
In essence, the sound of the piano comes in two parts: its attack and its decay. The striking of a hammer is followed by the resonance of a string or strings. (Much the same might be said about the vibraphone, as it happens.) This dual quality of sound comes to mind when listening to Moments by New York-based composer Michael Vincent Waller. Performed by pianist R. Andrew Lee and vibraphonist William Winant, Moments − his third album, following Trajectories (Recital, 2017) and The South Shore (X…
Performs Songs from 'Kraftwerk 2' and 'Kraftwerk'
**500 copies** Not to be confused with the first volume released by Karlrecords in 2017, here comes the second installment of 'modern composition supergroup' - as nailed down by The Wire - Zeitkratzer's re-interpretations of early compositions by electronic pioneers Kraftwerk. Founded in 1997 by Reinhold Friedl, Zeitkratzer have since been creating an impressive broad catalogue of recordings, from the obligatory (20th Century avant-garde composers like Cage, Stockhausen or Lucier) to the unexpec…
Point/Wave
The first piece composer Catherine Lamb has written specifically for acoustic guitar was commissioned by Chilean guitarist Christián Alvear. Extending concepts from an installation piece titled Secondary Rainbow with Bryan Eubanks, Lamb employs electronics over an infinite cycle of four "environmental chords" which overlap and resonate with one another.
Shade / Gradient
**425 copies, 3-color letterpressed jacket with large 20-page booklet containing the full score and a lengthy interview with the composer** Catherine Lamb’s work is characterized by an insistence on what she calls the “interaction of tone”. Precisely tuned intervals, played slowly at subtle volumes, blend and generate a host of difference and combination tones, phasing, beating and aural illusions. Her ensemble and orchestral compositions have been performed in grand halls and d.i.y. spaces alik…
Music For Lock Grooves
**250 copies** SN Variations fifth release features two tracks in three parts each composed for lock grooves recorded onto acetate, percussion by Sam Wilson (Riot Ensemble / Actress) and violin performed by Aisha Orazbayeva. The tracks also feature the piano of Mark Knoop and the voice of Josephine Stephenson. A lock groove is one cycle of one groove on a record. This is 1.8 sec cut at 33rpm and 1.33 cut at 45rpm. Adrian Corker used the cutting lathe currently residing in the living room of The …
Three Realizations For Ensembles
Three compositions written by Francisco Meirino for ensembles. Utilizing pitch and timbre of traditional acoustic instruments Meirino’s unique compositional voice speaks out. Guiding the listener through tension and decompression, unease and malaise. Performed with Ensemble Vortex and Ensemble Phoenix in Basel, recorded during 2016-2019.Born in Spain in 1975, Meirino is active since 1994 (as Phroq until 2009) in experimental music and live performance. His music explores the tension between pro…
Orpheus Variations
Orpheus Variations is a new composition by Alvin Lucier for solo cello and seven wind instruments. It is based on a particular sonority from the first movement of Igor Stravinsky's ballet score, Orpheus; a sonority that has haunted Lucier for decades. Orpheus Variations is one of eight large-scale compositions made expressly for Charles Curtis by Alvin Lucier in the last 15 years. This performance was conducted by Petr Kotik, with Charles Curtis playing solo cello alongside members of the SEM En…
Chamber Music: Alvin Lucier & Morton Feldman
Anthony Burr and Charles Curtis present a collection of curated compositions from Alvin Lucier and Morton Feldman. Two Lucier pieces, "August Moon" and "Trio For Clarinet, Cello & Tuba" are presented here for the first time. Liner notes are excerpted from a lecture on Morton Feldman given by Alvin Lucier. A selection from Alvin Lucier's liner notes: "For Feldman, dynamics serve an acoustical function. When he mitigates a piano attack he reduces that spike of noise that's at the onset of every pi…
Two Orchestra Pieces
This recording is the first ever devoted to the orchestral music of Christian Wolff (b. 1934) and thus documents a little-known aspect of his wide-ranging work. John, David (1998) introduces in its second part a prominent role for solo percussionist, playing a wide range of pitched and non-pitched instruments, including marimba, glockenspiel, a variety of drums, wood and metal instruments and other sources, the exact choice left to the performer. Rhapsody (2009), in contrast, uses instruments of…
Darkroom
Tiny space... dimmed lights... little steps... circling... like abstract curving lines... round and round... repeat... Composition by Slobodan Kajkut. Personnel: Dejan Trkulja - clarinet; Christian Pollheimer - vibraphone; Slobodan Kajkut - sampler, programming.
H1KhH2WM (Du Seuil), a Five-letter Sufi Word
The third chapter in the Sufi Word's series. Jean-Luc Fafchamps
on the release: "The Sufi Letters is a vast project of 28 compositions
(for the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet) undertaken in 2000 and still
ongoing. I am drawing inspiration from the symbolic charts found in
Sufi mysticism. Each Letter is a sonic meditation on the frontiers of
conscience and the paradoxes of time. Today's word, 'Du seuil' ('From
the threshold'), is the third word to be released by Sub Rosa. It is a
journe…
Muntzers Stern, Solo II
Jakob Ullmann has made the orchestral work "steine, feuer, sterne" (stones, fire, stars) based on a modular structure, such that individual sections can be played outside of a complete performance, solo or in predetermined combinations; this album presents one section for solo bassoon titled "Muntzers stern" performed by Dafne Vicente-Sandoval.From the liner notes by Hans-Peter Schulz; Translation by Peter Gebert: Solo II is part of a group of works with the title Buch der Stille 1 ('Book of Sil…
And On The Seventh Day Petals Fell In Petaluma
The history of American avant-garde music is a snarled knot, twisting through the decades, spanning genre, practice, and approach. Most narratives plant its origins within the post-war period, orbiting around John Cage, Morton Feldman, and those artists springing from the movements of Fluxus and free-jazz. American creative innovation issued unquestionable influence over the later half of 20th century, but the root of its radicalism was earlier, with its origins often misplaced. Rather growing f…
Propaganda
Written for theatre in 1987 using a host of avian and mammalian voices, snippets of unidentified musical material and electroacoustic noise- sculpting, as well as invented and real instruments played by Fred Frith. This was a hard time and the mood is intense, lean and not cheerful, though there are some gruesomely cheery inserts. There's no fat but a lot of meat here.