Phi
First meeting of experimental musicians Keith Rowe & Radu Malfatti in a 3 disc set: one disc of compositions by Jurg Frey and Cornelius Cardew; one disc of their own compositions; and one disc of improvisation. Keith Rowe and Radu Malfatti are two of the most influential experimental musicians in recent decades, each with extensive bodies of highly distinctive work and a combined 80+ years at the forefront of their respective areas of exploration. On Φ, their first meeting ever is documented via…
Box music
Rutger and Stephen sort of accidentally met through e-mail. A simple note regarding an ordering question for a CD led to an enthusiastic e-mail conversation and climaxed in a musical collaboration. This all happened in a very short period, both musicians being very inspired by the concept of “exchange,” as a means to cross space and time -- Rutger living in the Netherlands and Stephen in Virginia.
Most of the time, when (electronic) musicians work together it’s a matter of swapping digital files…
Every action
2004 release ** "12k presents Every Action, the 3rd full-length release from the UK’s Motion (Chris Coode) and the follow-up to 2002’s critically acclaimed Dust (12k1019). In addition to his work with 12k (Dust, as well as a collaboration with Doron Sadja on 12k’s recent Two Point Two compilation, and an MP3 only release on 12k’s term. series) Coode has worked with Fat Cat and also released the debut Motion cd Pictures (now out of print) on his own imprint. The work on Every ActionPictures was p…
Z
**100 copies** Collezione del Silenzio is a series of 26 cassette tapes by 26 italian acts edited by Silentes Tapestry. Each tape is associated with a letter of the alphabet, each letter is associated with an artist, each letter gives birth to an unwanted word. The music is the artist's personal vision of silence. Each tape is hand numbered and limited to 100 copies. The Z letter is dedicated to Andrea Marutti a veteran of the experimental / ambient scene, also known projects as Amon and Never K…
Fabrication 2
'The first collaboration by these two renowned sound artists. Fabrication saw its beginning during the production of Re-Post-Refabricated, a project in which artists were selected by Richard Chartier to rework-create new works from his 1998 CD Postfabricated for its reissue in 2003. As it was intended as an open project, Asmus Tietchens continued to explore the source materials and suggested further formal collaboration. This evolved into the collaborative work Fabrication. The CD comes in a ful…
Untitled
A long awaited first release of David Borden's music, performed by his Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Company in 1976-1977 is now available. Borden and his group used Moog synthesizer prototypes, becoming the first live Moog band ever, and utilizing the instruments to develop a style associated with Minimalism. These unique performances capture the rare analog synthesizer in newly created works. Borden contributed a lengthy text on the evolution of his style.
Curiosum
LP version with color inner sleeve and liner notes by Asmus Tietchens. Originally released on Sky Records in 1981, Bureau B reissues Cluster's Curiosum -- the sixth duo collaboration between Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius. Curiosum was to mark a departure to pastures new. Little did they know that this would be their last release for the next nine years. Curiosum was launched into an atmosphere of musical turbulence. Electronic sounds had become commonplace in pop music and the voice …
The Everything And The Nothing
*Limited edition of 300 copies.* Celer is a husband (Will) and wife (Danielle) duo from California that use a variety of strings as the basis for their sound. Cello, viola, violin and the sounds are mixed in with field recordings, choir, live theremin and then tape spliced and re-assembled in varying lengths to create a loop base. Those sounds are then sampled, layered and processed. The result is a shimmering orchestra. Periods of silence between the notes only enhance the sound. Though at time…
Exactly As I Am
Exactly As I Am is the third and final release in The Hafler Trio's collaborative series with Jonsi Birgisson of Sigur Ros. Like the first two in the series Exactly As I Am is a double full length release and is comprised of all new material recorded in May/June of 2005. Exactly As I Am is lavishly packaged in a special die cut oversized package printed on two different types of parchment, meant to imitate small editions of French poetry ca. 1900.
Ghost Of A Plane Of Air
2006 release ** Keenan Lawler has spent the last 25 years developing his own personal sound world, constantly pushing himself in new directions and developing new techniques, while remaining completely focused on his vision. His experiments on 1930 national resonator guitar are the stuff of legend you sometimes hear from town to town by someone who may have had the good fortune to witness one of his performances. Words such as cosmic, monolithic and deeply american have been used to describe the…
White Rooms
2005 release ** Since 1999, Kinetix is Gianluca Becuzzi, electronic composer and sound artist active since the first half of the 80’s. He writes: “The artistic production of Kinetixis characterised by a strong experimental imprint, by the interest into the expressive possibilities offered by the digital technologies and by a clear aesthetic inclination towards minimalist forms and micro noises/sounds.” (from the website) Really, the music sounds like a study about a representational work of mini…
Robbed
2007 release ** "This new Goem release is a solo work by Roel Meelkop (this time without Frans de Waard and Peter Duimelinks). The source material is an anonymous CD, whose samples are used for these eight tracks. The result is a combination of rhythmic patterns with minimalistic passages, strange loops, repetitive elements. Therefore, an interesting episode into Goem’s production, quite different from early releases of the trio, maybe preluding an evolution in its music."
Last Camel In Paris
Throughout the 1970s, legendary American composer Terry Riley toured regularly in Europe, performing solo organ concerts. In October 1978, Riley's personal technician Chester Wood built a stereo digital delay out of an ancient computer he had procured from Don Buchla, and the subsequent tour was the maiden voyage to try it out. Riley's specially modified two-manual Yamaha YC-45D portable combo organ had a Just Intonation setting and allowed him to feed stereo signals to the digital delay. The Ya…
Wind Shadows
The music on these CDs takes us into a new realm of music making, one that Alvin Lucier has defined for us and one that demands that we start to listen anew. His work has been more often described in terms of science than of art as if it were a series of quasi-scientific experiments, but to put the emphasis here is to miss the point, for its purpose is never “explanatory” (the goal of science) but, like all art, “revelatory.” This is not to suggest that the composer has some spiritual agenda in …
Schlingen Blängen
Schlingen Blängen is an invaluable addition to the slender but precious discography of Charlemagne Palestine, one of the legendary figures of the amazingly fertile New York and West Coast experimental music/art scene of the sixties and seventies. He is considered to be a seminal figure of early minimalism—as important as his better-documented contemporaries. His performances on the giant bells at St. Thomas Church and his evening-length Bösendorfer shows are still spoken of with awe by those who…
The Ninth Set
Irish composer Roger Doyle's first release on Die Stadt is his prize-winning work The Ninth Set, a 67 minute masterpiece in 5 parts. He was awarded the Magisterium Prize at this years's Bourges International Electro-acoustic Music Competition in France for parts 4 and 5. The award, which is one of the most important prizes in the world for electronic music, is open to composers having at least 25 years of professional experience in the field, and its objective is 'the promotion and diffusion of …
Generators
As "Sleep" begins there is a suggestion made, a hypnotic motion meant only to seduce the mind into the belief that Darren Tate and Colin Potter are intent on relaxing muscle and slowing brain activity to a crawl. The hum of electronics blows easily until random sounds—coughing, restlessness, twisting and turning—bolt through the still waters of the track. Slowly developing melodic themes, almost too distant to piece together, stretch from their slumber and begin a slow crawl through the lamp-lit…
In Opposition To Our Acceleration
In Opposition to Our Acceleration mostly consists of soft, atmospheric sound art pieces, as usual fusing electronics, computer treatments, and improvisation on amplified objects. The characteristic mood swings of Illusion of Safety are nowhere to be found on this CD. Things develop slowly, softly, luring the listener into a catatonic state, an "illusion of safety" that endures throughout the disc's 74 minutes. The album has been put together from various live recordings ranging from quartet perf…
Jetsun Mila
Beautiful extended ambient work from Eliane Radigue, a composer known for her work with magnetic tape and Arp Synthesizer, and who studied under Pierre Schaeefer and Pierre Henry in the late 50's. Her compositions are often drone-like, impeccably crafted electronic sounds which seem to move in a continual flow around the listener. She has created many meditative works since the late 1970s, mostly based on Tibetan Buddhist subject matter.Jetsun Mila is inspired by the life of Milarepa, a great yo…
On the Other Ocean
On the Other Ocean is an improvisation by Maggi Payne and Arthur Stidfole centered around six pitches which, when they are played, activate electronic pitch-sensing circuits connected to the "interrupt" line and input ports of a microcomputer, Kim-1. The microcomputer can sense the order and timing in which the six pitches are played and can react by sending harmony-changing messages to two handmade music synthesizers. The relationship between the two musicians and the computer is an interactive…