BOW
Brussels-based string quintet BOW celebrates musical freedom. Juggling between their own written music and pure improvisation, the ensemble has worked since its creation on a personal and modern approach, digging into their instruments' capabilities and blending a large scope of influences.
Its debut eponym LP, due to be released on Sub Rosa, gathers five instantly-composed pieces that were recorded live by Christine Verschorren in the Echo Collective studio in Brussels. During the day, BOW repe…
The Lightest Words
The "The Lightest Words" by Kirsten Reese is now available at World Edition. Kirsten Reese studied flute, electronic music and composition and lives in Berlin, where she teaches electroacoustic composition at the University of the Arts. In her works Reese often focuses on performative and narrative aspects, as is the case in the three pieces on this CD.
The first track "the lightest words had the weight of oracles" features the historical and specific tone colour of the Fairlight CMI Synthesize…
Good Day Good Day Bad Day Bad Day
A unique and extraordinary 45-minute composition for piano & keyboards + percussion, written for the GBSR duo: George Barton & Siwan Rhys. Composed by Oliver Leith in 2018, and recorded in March 2020 by Mark Knoop.
"I like looking at and framing everyday life, sometimes banal things. Good day good day bad day bad day is almost an incantation, I was interested in the rituals, habits, things we tell ourselves to keep going, invasive irrational thoughts, odd pleasures and reliefs of life. Mainly be…
Monument of Diamonds
Epic 45-minute microtonal composition by Kraig Grady, using a 17-tone scale, the Meta-Slendro tuning, created by Erv Wilson. Composed in 2020. The instruments were specially built or adapted for the unusual tuning system.
"The idea of Monuments came from the sound of the brass, in which I include the saxophone here. Brass seems to be used much less in newer music than strings, winds and percussion which is unfortunate. Since they are used less than strings or winds in new music, they seem to inv…
Repetition of the Same Dream
Five works for flute, percussion & electronics, recorded during Covid-19 lockdown in a church in Basel, Switzerland, March 2020. Commissioned by Another Timbre and performed by Mara Winter - flute and Clara de Asís - bowed objects, percussion & electronics.
"There were some pieces that I composed and others that were formed by Mara and I, where the roles of composer / performer dissolved into each other. ‘A passage through’ was composed specifically for Mara’s bass flute, also relating very much…
Cantus, Descant
**2CD Edition** The new double album from artist Sarah Davachi is an 80 minute, 17 track meditation on impermanence and endings, framed by minimalistic organ études and careful harmonic layering, with two tracks featuring the artist’s own vocals for the first time.I spent a lot of time while working on this album thinking about impermanence and endings, which led me to change my understanding of “vanitas” and “memento mori.” These concepts arise allegorically across classical antiquity and Buddh…
Kreiselwelle
irr. app. (ext.) is the sound-engineering project of Californian M.S. Waldron, whose liminal slippages and detourned croons have been spotted recently on stage in Nurse With Wound. Yet for all of the antics that are required for the NWW spectacle, Mr. Waldron still dedicates himself in the parallel pursuits of irr. app. (ext.) with a discography that reads more like a wunderkammer of uncanny investigations into futility declared as its reverse.
Kreiselwelle is the third and final installment to …
Agglomeration of Measurement
**Embossed, Matte laminate sleeve, insert card** This album is a distillation of the many long-term relationships I’ve had with Australian composers. The music forms a body of work, spanning fifteen years, that provides a glimpse into my percussive language and a twenty-first century Australian percussion sound.
In many instances the pieces on this album were the germ for larger scale compositions and collaborations, forming some of the major works for Speak Percussion, the organisation I curren…
Harbors
**Matte laminate sleeve with black inner reverse print** Over the last 20 years, since its humble launch at the outset of the millennia, Lawrence English’s Room40 imprint has grown into an unmistakable force in the landscape of experimental, electronic, and electroacoustic music, enveloping a vast global context that extends far beyond its Australian roots. Somehow as humble as it is ambitious, with a catalog number into the hundreds - covering an incredibly diverse range of practices, as well a…
Breaking the Elephant’s Legs
Marc Behrens presents six extended surrealist songs ranging from psycho rock to dismantled R&B, crossing into doom jazz and spoken word. Animal field recordings; electronic boom and buzz; synths; detuned sitar; violins played by Portuguese master musician Carlos Zingaro. None of this is in any way what you would expect.
Arrow
Sarah Lipstate’s work as Noveller, the vehicle through which she explores the possibilities of instrumental, primarily electric guitar compositions, has resulted in a rich body of work, one that has elevated her to the level of similar innovators like Vini Reilly and Roy Montgomery. Arrow continues that journey, further developing her darkly beautiful work in songs that combine the tranquility of meditation with elements of tension and unease.
Album opener “Rune” is based around a deep, pulsing …
Customer's Copy
**12" pink-hued clear RTI vinyl pressing** Customer’s Copy is the debut LP of contorted cosmic jazz and eccentric minimal electronics by Exotic Sin. The duo of Naima Karlsson and Kenichi Iwasa first came together for a performance celebrating the art and music of Karlsson’s grandparents, Moki and Don Cherry, before continuing as an independent unit that still incorporates some of the Cherrys’ instruments as well as their synergetic integration of music with artistic practice.
Preferring the star…
Chanteuse
Since the early 1970s, Jacqueline Humbert has collaborated as performer, visual artist, and designer with leading innovative artists, filmmakers, choreographers and composers worldwide. Her approach to vocal performance has influenced many composers, and the works in Chanteuse represent a new and exciting extension and reinterpretation of the "song" genre. Humbert on the release: "Chanteuse is a collection of new or previously unreleased songs, many of which were written for me by a broad range …
The Consummation of Right and Wrong
David First likes to use the phrase "the virtuosity of slowness" to describe his musical philosophy. In The Consummation of Right and Wrong, he and his eight-piece ensemble, The Western Enisphere, practice this virtuosity to great effect in closely examining the universes that fall between the cracks of convention, reflecting a wide continuum of complex relationships, all the while creating music that is simply ravishing to listen to. This is "drone music" as dynamic organism, moving from compac…
De Overkant
**Edition of 50 copies in original recycled, silk screened sleeve, signed and numbered.** A suite of spellbinding ambient folk meditations from Timo Van Luijk, the boss of Belgium's exquisite Metaphon label. A regular collaborator with the likes of Andrew Chalk, Raymond Dijkstra, and Christoph Heeman, among others, Timo operates at the core of Belgium's current avant-garde and experimental circles. Produced and released under his Af Ursin alias on the La Scrie Dorée label set up for such purpose…
Trudge Lightly
**Deluxe gatefold sleeve with varnish effect including an 8 pages photo booklet.** "Pak Yan Lau, one of the most original pianists of the new European creative scene, has the ability to build complex formal architectures starting from minimal materials – insistent rhythms, barely hinted melodies, electronic effects as evocative as they are mysterious. Darin Gray uses his long experience as the backbone of many improvisational groups with a painstaking work on timbre and a deep and multiform soun…
A Short Break
**180 gr Vinyl. Picutred Disc** Robert Wyatt’s long and distinguished career has been extremely varied. Initially a drummer with 60s psychedelic rock group Soft Machine. Leading the Canterbury scene in that time. Following that, Wyatt formed progressive rock band Matching Mole, focusing on instrumentals. An accident in 1973 resulted in paraplegia and a forced change in direction. The 70s and 80s delivered many well received solo and collaboration albums (including Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason and Mik…
Linea Mundi
Klaus Lang's involvement with God Records began with already cult two-part release of his stunning organ works. Famous for his heavy droning sound, new Lang's pieces are highly successful ensemble pieces linea mundi. and weiße farben., both premiered at the festival Wien Modern. Heavy textures, disturbing counterparts, slow progressions, threatening dynamics...
According to Marshal McLuhan, the nature of the medium used to transmit a message is of greater importance than the message’s meaning or…
Celestial Birds
The compilation “Celestial Birds” reveals and focuses on the widely unkown electronic compositions of the AACM founder and jazz pianist Muhal Richard Abrams. #5 in the Perihel Series, curated by zeitkratzer director Reinhold Friedl. Anybody interested in jazz knows that Chicago has always been an impressive hot spot for new talents – and still is. One essential landmark in the history and development of jazz was the founding of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians) in …
Anadyomene
The eclectic sensitivity of the composer Roberto Laneri (Prima Materia) looks unparalleled in the Italian avant-garde context. Anadyomene, published for the first time in 1987, shows the myth of Venus in a dystopian and dreamlike world. Laneri conceives a sound poem that opens up to the archetypal dimension of the water creation, through the symbol of bivalve conch, the myth of the feminine power is narrated thanks to the verses of the renaissance poet Angelo Poliziano. Creating a daring connect…