In stock
LP
Doris DENNISON
“Earth Interval”
Edition of 300. First vinyl release for experimental percussion pioneer and feminist icon. Member of John Cage's legendary first percussion ensemble in the 1930s-40s, close associate of Lou Harrison, and longtime accompanist for Anna Halprin's radical dance company. Composed in the mid-1950s for dancer AA Leath, this remarkable work was recently discovered in archives by Tom Welsh. Comprising three movements (Land Form, Air Tide, and Earth Play), it's scored for recorder, drums, gongs, maracas using revolutionary techniques decades ahead of its time - including lowering and raising gongs into water while beating. Gracefully rendered by Chicago's Third Coast Percussion in its first-ever recording. Pantone color vinyl with commissioned liner notes illuminating this groundbreaking composer's life and legacy.
22,00€
Out of stock
LP
Jürg FREY
“Extended Circular Music”
Edition of 200. Swiss Wandelweiser master reimagined by virtuoso flutist Manuel Zurria in stunning solo interpretations. Frey's String Quartet No. 3 and four Extended Circular Music pieces (originally for various chamber ensembles) are transformed into ethereal soundscapes through Zurria's conceptual approach inspired by Japanese Kintsugi art. Interweaving minimalism with radical experimentalism, these recordings draw startling scope from minimal material means - breath-length utterances dance among complex harmonic clusters, provoking suspensions of time. Zurria aimed not for literal translation but free interpretation, highlighting critical points to make them shine in their uniqueness. Pantone color vinyl with exploratory liner notes by Bradford Bailey.
25,00€
In stock
LP
James TENNEY
“Postal Pieces”
The first ever vinyl release to attend to James Tenney's legendary "Postal Pieces", marking the first ever appearance of five of the suite's works on vinyl, drawing upon recordings made in 2003, by the Amsterdam based ensemble, The Barton Workshop, under the direction of James Fulkerson.
Among the most important and highly regarded efforts in Tenney's canon of compositions, as well as within the history of 20th Century music, these five pieces represent a crucial bridge between Fluxus-oriented conceptualism, minimalism, and the microtonal complexities that would emerge in their wakes. Issued in a highly limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, it includes exact replicas of the original postcard graphic scores, and features newly commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey, Blume's brand new edition takes great steps to centring Tenney at the eye the storm during some of experimental music's most important years.
"The Postal Pieces" stands among Tenney's well known and celebrated compositions, and illuminates the dualities embraced by the composer, notably his use of sound to develop consciousness in and of others, and his willingness to draw on elements and observations of everyday life; citing his strong dislike of writing letters as being the primary inspiration for their inception. In lieu, he conceived to send his friends—John Bergamo, Alison Knowles, Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, Harold Budd, Philip Corner, Joel Krosnick, Buell Neidlinger, Susan Allen, Max Neuhaus, and Malcolm Goldstein—short scores on the back of postcards. The suite is composed around three themes: Tenney's concept of swell form (utilizing repetition and progressing through a structurally symmetrical arch), intonation, and the desire to produce "meditative perceptual states".
James Tenney's "Post Pieces" is issued in a highly limited vinyl edition of 300 copies, which includes a exact replicas of the original postcard graphic scores, and features newly commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey.
25,00€
In stock
LP
Ben VIDA
“Vocal Trio”
Ben Vida first emerged during the mid 1990s within a loose constellation of experimental musicians, centred around a performance series of improvised workshops at the Myopic Bookstore in Chicago, alongside Jim O'Rourke, Kevin Drumm, Chad Taylor, and the other future members of Town and Country - Jim Dorling, Joshua Abrams, and Liz Payne - the band within which he would gain widespread recognition over the following years. Like many other members of that scene, Vida remains a restless product of a fleeting context - Chicago during the 1990s and early 2000s - continuously undermining concrete notions of idiom and signifier within a practice that witnessed him rendering bristling abstractions within Pillow, glacial melodies with Town and Country, the art-rock mayhem of Bird Show Band, and the angular, driving indie rock of Joan of Arc, before becoming immersed in a practice of systems based synthesis, beginning in the 2010s, that guided much of his first decade of output as a solo performer and composer.
As early as 2013, he began to incorporate acoustic sound sources - specifically the human voice - into his work. It was this shift, evolving and refining itself over the last decade, that underscores radically the leap in his practice represented by “Vocal Trio”, a work that encounters Vida composing for the human voice with the ideas that allow for synthesis - transferring the underlying concepts and structures of both subtractive and additive synthesis to the acoustic realm - without using a synthesiser.
During the Spring of 2022 Vida was in Bremen, Germany, collaborating on a dance piece with the choreographer Fay Driscoll, when the production fell into delays. Finding himself with time on his hands, a space at his disposal, and the company of two dancers - Amy Gernux and Lotte Rudhart - who were also singers, the idea for the piece - to utilising the larynx as audio paths (multi-harmonic or harmonically pure) while conceptualising each person’s mouth as a filter to sculpt the timbre and resonance of a given tone - began to take shape in his mind. Considering how typographical scores might be developed into a non-linguistic social framework, Vida drafted a single page of text - what became the score for “Vocal Trio” - accompanied by a set of harmonic suggestion and loose parameters, seeking a core meaning from each word's phonic make-up by each of the three singers (Vida, Gernux and Rudhart) singing as slowly as possible.
At the core of the pulsing vocal drones - intoxicating, harmonically rich long-tones - that make up the duration abstraction of “Vocal Trio”, is Vida’s regard for music as a social space. It is an experiment that seeks liberation through the act of collective music making, by challenging the terms through which the act of composing is perceived and then relinquishing control. The piece’s rehearsals were simply the three performers hanging out, allowing their knowing each other and natural dynamics to contribute to its form as the score, before recording during a single afternoon at the end of a number of days sharing company and space.
Creatively visionary and groundbreaking on numerous terms, as well as being intoxicatingly beautiful and remarkably listenable, Ben Vida’s “Vocal Trio” represents a striking step forward for one of the most ambitious and outstanding sonic artists working in the United States today. Issued by Blume in a highly limited vinyl edition of 200 copies mastered by Stephan Mathieu, featuring specially commissioned liner notes by Bradford Bailey and a leporello insert offering the piece visual score, this is hands down one of the most important contemporary records we’re likely to encounter in 2024.
25,00€
Out of stock
LP
COMPILATION
“New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media”
Unquestionably among the most important collections of experimental music to emerge during the 20th Century, "New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media" is the original feminist presentation in its context, releasing the work of Johanna M. Beyer, Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Spiegel, Megan Roberts, Ruth Anderson, and Laurie Anderson under its collective banner. Includes newly commissioned liner notes by Jennifer Lucy Allen and Bradford Bailey.
Since its founding back in 2014, Blume has carved a unique place in cultural landscape, issuing free standing works, spanning the historical and contemporary, that represent singular gestures of creativity within the field of experimental sound. Joining their broad efforts in building networks of context and understanding that already includes the efforts of efforts of Werner Durand, Sarah Hennies, Bruce Nauman, John Butcher, Jocy de Oliveira, Mary Jane Leach, Valentina Magaletti, Alvin Curran, Julius Eastman, Alvin Lucier, and others, Blume delivers their third release in their first suite of releases for 2024, the fist ever vinyl reissue of the seminal "New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media" compilation, originally issued by Thomas Buckner's 1750 Arch Records in 1977. Out of print for decades on vinyl and arguably the most important feminist statement in the history of experimental music, illuminating the work of Johanna M. Beyer, Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Spiegel, Megan Robert, Ruth Anderson, and Laurie Anderson—in a number of cases representing their recording debuts—during a crucial moment in the history of experimental music. Blume's brand new edition—complete with newly commissioned liner notes by Jennifer Lucy Allen and Bradford Bailey, as well as reproducing Charles Amirkhanian's original accompanying text—radically shifts perceptions of the past and present day with its truly revolutionary sounds.
Issued by Thomas Buckner's 1750 Arch Records in 1977, and out of print nearly the entire time since, "New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media" can be understood within two simple frameworks. On one hand, it is an astounding document of the landscape of experimental music toward the end of the 1970s. On the other, it is a historically significant feminist statement, being the first collection of experimental music entirely dedicated to female composers, a number of whom were grossly under-celebrated at the time, but have since gone on to be regarded as among the most important composers of their generation.
The eight pieces gathered by "New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media"—Johanna M. Beyer's "Music of the Spheres", Annea Lockwood's "World Rhythms", Pauline Oliveros' "Bye Bye Butterfly", Laurie Spiegel's "Appalachian Grove I", Megan Roberts' "I Could Sit Here All Day", Ruth Anderson's "Points", and Laurie Anderson's "New York Social Life" and "Time To Go (For Diego)"—might be regarded as the first cohesive vision of alternate proximity or expression of experimental music to what has always been a frustratingly male dominated environment, and to the tropes, temperaments, and sensibilities that have been historically perceived to define it. It is an expanded vision of truth. While the presence of feminine sensibilities and temperaments in experimental music, however they may present themselves, were anything but new in 1977, "New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media" was the first opportunity, beyond the temporal limitations of live performance, to view them collectively, rather than as individualised expressions within a larger body of similar gestures (as was the case of Oliveros' inclusion in Odyssey's 1967 "New Sounds In Electronic Music" and "Extended Voices" compilations) where they might be confused for something else; to regard and celebrate a radical notion of feminine sonority for its unique characteristics and through its interrelations.
While its historical significance and groundbreaking nature can not be debated in its totality, nearly half a century on "New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media" remains compelling in both its musicality and the palpable sense of its lasting influence. Every composition across the album's two sides is not only engrossing and deeply compelling—feeling as fresh and relevant as the day it was laid to tape—but clearly tangible in their lasting influence. Viewed in context, the album's eight works feel like breath of fresh air when compared to much of what came before, and laid the groundwork for much of what was to come, introducing a new, often more holistic temperament and more sensitive and inclusive sensibility into the landscape of experimental music.
Particularly in the case of Annea Lockwood, Pauline Oliveros, Laurie Spiegel, Ruth Anderson, and Laurie Anderson, it's hard to throw ourselves back in time and imagine a moment when these composers rested in a fairly marginalised corner of the creative landscape. Blume's brand new edition of "New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media"—complete with newly commissioned liner notes by Jennifer Lucy Allen and Bradford Bailey, as well as reproducing Charles Amirkhanian's original accompanying text—brings us back to this confounding moment and points us toward a crucial moment of change set forth by these incredible composers and their sounds. Absolutely seminal and not to be missed.
25,00€
Out of stock
LP
Alvin LUCIER
“Vespers”
Vespers (1969) and Chambers (1968), the two works featured on this LP, witness Lucier rethinking the material and conceptual possibilities of music at every turn. First released as Lucier's contribution to the Sonic Arts Union's lone LP, Electronic Sound, in 1972, Vespers is a work generated by two equal actors —the performers and the space that they occupy. Conceived following a chance encounter with hand-held echolocation technology —the Sondol™, a pulse oscillator that emits short, sharp pulses at variable repetition speeds, producing echoes from the reflecting walls of a space to register relative location and orientation— it stands as one of the first works in history within which the decisions made during the performance are solely based on acoustics, allowing sound to be equally the content and structural determiner.
Written as a poetic "prose score", for the realization of Vespers, each performer is equipped with a Sondol™ and asked to move blindfolded within a defined space, moving from one point to the next using only echolocation, taking what Lucier describes as "sound photographs" that reveal discrete details of the given area. As the recording unfolds, the aptitude of this image becomes increasingly clear. While an aesthetic relationship to the movement of musical minimalism, embarked upon by a number of his peers, has often presented itself within Lucier's work, of all of them this is arguably most present within Vespers. Despite the radical leap it presented within the history of the sonic arts, Vespers was not the first of Lucier's works that began to specifically address the relation between sound, perception, and space. Notably Chambers, composed the year before in 1968 and embedded with the wry humor which lingers below much of the composer's output, explored the theme on a brilliantly miniature scale.
As a total work, Chambers contends with the relationship between the knowing and understanding of what we hear, our perception of the source of a sound, and its relation to space. When viewed in the immediate context of Vespers, as it is here, it presents as an unexpected inversion of what was to come. While it plays on the relation of sight and the sonic actor, here what is seen and unseen takes on a dynamically different role. Equally, there is not one space to perceive, but many. For the realization of Chambers, battery-operated radios, tape recorders, and various kinds of electric toys are hidden in paper bags, shoes, kettles, a suitcase, and other small resonant spaces, which not only limit the perception of these object to their sounds alone, but take on the role of acoustic actors on the sounds within, each space becoming as individual and distinct as the object it contains. Taking it one step further, rather than being static, these "chambers" are carried by performers into larger ones —those in which the work is performed— further altering the sounds which occupy them, drawing the ear, once again, to the action of that which contains a body of sound.
Vespers is released by Blume in an edition of 300 copies on 160gr audiophile coloured (dark blue) vinyl, housed in the label's traditional monochrome package coming with a newly designed obi-strip/insert with an introduction by Robert Ashley, liner-notes by Bradford Bailey and Gaia Martino, and also including a printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, plus an all-new transparent colour-matching outer plastic sleeve. Photography by Mary Lucier.
21,00€
Out of stock
LP
Alvin CURRAN
“Canti Illuminati”
An occupant of the present and thread to the past - a rare juncture between diverse polarities of experimental practice, from free improvisation and modern classical composition, to primitivism, electronic music, and extended techniques, for more than half a century Alvin Curran has stood as beacon in the landscape of organized sound. From his efforts within Musica Elettronica Viva, the collective which he helped found in 1966 with Frederic Rzewski and Richard Teitelbaum, to those as a solo-performer and composer, his sounds and ideas have effected immeasurable change.
Canti Illuminati, composed and recorded between 1973 and 1977, stands as one of the great documents from the golden era of Curran's singular brand of creative radicalism - combining a deep sense of social and political consciousness, with creative humanism and visionary compositional ideas. Blume Editions is proud to present the first ever vinyl reissue of this seminal master-stoke by one of the most important composers working today.
A bridge between the American and European traditions of experimental music, Canti Illuminati, Curran's tribute to the human voice - "the most natural source of music", delves toward the very origins of music itself. In lyrical and poetic form, it rethinks the possibilities and potential of organized sound, seeking something fundamentally human - an optimistic vision of the future, born of the primitive past. Standing apart from canonical definition, it contributes to a more complex and nuanced understanding of what musical Minimalism is. Consciously conceived by Curran for the format of the LP, the album takes form as a single work in two parts - Canti Illuminati, For Choir, Synthesizer, Piano And Tape - a structured choral improvisation, built from the contributions and voices of Alessandro Bruno, Antonella Talamonti, Antonio Cesareni, David Thorner, Elisabetta Bordes-Page, Giorgio Caruano, Luca Miti, Manuela Garroni, Nicola Bernardini, Pierluigi Castellano, and Sista Carandini, and Canti Illuminati, For Voice, Synthesizer, Tape, which Curran realised as a solo performer with his own voice, tape delayed feedback, and a Serge synthesizer and sequencer.
Sinfully under celebrated and all too rarely heard since its initial release, Canti Illuminati remains a profoundly compelling and moving body of sound - unavoidably beautiful - a landscape of sustained tone, rippling texture, and structural intervention. Necessity stripped to the elemental, while challenging, endlessly surprising, and complex. A crucial component in Curran's life long musical quest for something deeply human and fundamentally representative - that elusive thing which connects us all. Fully remastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, with brand new expanded liner text written by Bradford Bailey.
21,00€
Out of stock
2 LP
Julius EASTMAN
“Crazy Nigger / Evil Nigger / Gay Guerrilla”
Only a handful of years ago, the name Julius Eastman would have been met by a unanimous blank look. The legacy of this once darling of the New York post-minimal avant-garde had, since his untimely death at the age of 49, in 1990, been almost entirely lost. Eastman's story is as fascinating as they come – black, angry, and queer in an all too polite, straight white musical world. A prodigy and genius whose music took him to astounding heights, and whose unwillingness to conform and play by the rules took him to overwhelming lows, leading down the path of drug abuse, homelessness, and with it the loss of his scores and body of work. Even before his death, he was already a forgotten name.
Eastman belongs to a generation of composers who inherited the mantel left by 1970's Minimalism, making it their own – sometimes more simple and direct, others with tonal and structural complexity which bent the ear. Despite composing rigorously and being highly respected by his peers, was only given a slim number of chances to record his work, relegating most of voice as singer and pianist to the realization of others's work. It was Eastman who conducted the iconic recording of Arthur Russell's Tower of Meaning, an whose piano cuts its way across the 1976 recording of Morton Feldman's For Frank O'hara, not to mention a slew of recordings by Peter Maxwell Davies and Meredith Monk. Other than a single work, found on an obscure cassette complication, Tellus
4, his singular voice was no where to be found. It's likely that Eastman's would have been entirely lost, had it not been for rigorous efforts of a few close friends, the most persistent of whom was the composers, Mary Jane Leach, who spent years tracking down his lost scores. These efforts eventually led to the comprehensive cd collection, Unjust Malaise, issued by New World Records in 2005. It was the beginning of the turning tide, over the 13 years since, Eastman's singular voice has slowly returned to the audience he always deserved. It also represented the recorded debut of some his most thrilling and controversial work, three compositions for piano from what he called the Nigger Series - Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, and Crazy Nigger, all proofs of his creative brilliance and contentious politics in a single force. Now issued across two LPs in their first ever vinyl release by Blume Editions, offering extensive liner notes by Mary Jane Leach and Bradford Bailey, these three seminal works by one of the most important, but neglected, American composers of the 1970s and 80s, return to the light once more. Not only are Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, and Crazy Nigger an entire rethinking of Musical Minimalism, but they ferociously blow the doors of what classical music can be seen to be.
4, his singular voice was no where to be found. It's likely that Eastman's would have been entirely lost, had it not been for rigorous efforts of a few close friends, the most persistent of whom was the composers, Mary Jane Leach, who spent years tracking down his lost scores. These efforts eventually led to the comprehensive cd collection, Unjust Malaise, issued by New World Records in 2005. It was the beginning of the turning tide, over the 13 years since, Eastman's singular voice has slowly returned to the audience he always deserved. It also represented the recorded debut of some his most thrilling and controversial work, three compositions for piano from what he called the Nigger Series - Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, and Crazy Nigger, all proofs of his creative brilliance and contentious politics in a single force. Now issued across two LPs in their first ever vinyl release by Blume Editions, offering extensive liner notes by Mary Jane Leach and Bradford Bailey, these three seminal works by one of the most important, but neglected, American composers of the 1970s and 80s, return to the light once more. Not only are Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, and Crazy Nigger an entire rethinking of Musical Minimalism, but they ferociously blow the doors of what classical music can be seen to be.
42,00€
Out of stock
LP
Julius EASTMAN
“Evil Nigger / Gay Guerrilla”
« Gay Guerrilla » and « Evil Nigger », both composed in 1979, with a third work, « Crazy Nigger », make up what Eastman called The Nigger Series. Some of themost challenging and beautiful works composed for piano during their era, they double as a window into the intricate thought process and contentiousness of their creator. When the composer was asked to perform the series at Northwestern University in 1980, due to protests by African American students, their titles were censored in the event's program. His response was a flamboyant foreshadowing of the sentiments toward bigoted language which later arose within hip-hop culture – to publicly take back these words, assert ownership of them, and deploy their power for positive change.
What Eastman was early to recognize, was that there is a fundamental difference in what happens when these words are spoken by white people toward people of color, and when people of color deploy them toward a white audience. The balance of power shifts. Eastman's audience was largely heterosexual and white. He knew exactly what he was doing, and to whom he spoke.
The object in your hands contains some of the most striking and important music composed during the later decades of the 20th century - music which remained lost and unheard for years, not because of what it is, but because of who its composer was. It is music, doubling as the voice of a man, which, because it refused to be oppressed, was suppressed or ignored. Eastman's work is a conscious act of intervention, plowing into a context defined by heterosexual whiteness, attacking its unjust demands from within. It is Christ like – metaphor and beauty which is impossible to separate from the evils of the world.
It is a music which carries the body of a man. As it speaks to our hearts, as it offers an glimpse of the freedoms implied by the sublime, a shackle is bound – a consciousness of our complicity with unforgivable sin.
Edition of 300 copies.
21,00€
Out of stock
LP
Julius EASTMAN
“Crazy Nigger”
It's little wonder that Julius Eastman (who died in 1990 under unexplained circumstances), remained the supreme underground composer. He was Afro-American and gay, a composer who rocked the cerebral world of process music with his explosions of free improvisation. This is
first time any of Eastman's music has been available on LP, with the three extended pieces for four pianos, « Gay Guerrilla », « Evil Nigger » and « Crazy Nigger », all written and preformed around 1980. All three works generate their epic soundscapes through adamantly restated patterns and interlocking canons, not fragmenting now, but preaching urgent truths. To quote brilliant Mary Jane Leach liner notes: "He wrote what can be categorized as minimal music, but also wrote
"post-minimal" music before minimal music was fully established. His pieces straddle the two main styles of minimal music—rhythmic/pulse driven music (Steve Reich and Philip Glass) and spectral drone music (La Monte Young and Phill Niblock). While using process and rhythmic patterns, there is a flexibility that lends a breathing, organic feel to his music, a muscularity missing in a lot of other music from that time ith the re-emergence of his powerful music, a missing gap in the history
of contemporary music has been filled. Created in the late 1970s, these three pieces should have been released on vinyl at the time they were written. However, that was not to be, and they, and other pieces of Eastman's, were unavailable commercially. Instead, they were shared on cassettes, copied and passed from one admirer to another, a kind of underground musical distribution by aficionados. Unlike today's instant access to music, at that time each new copy represented a time
commitment, since it took as long to copy a piece as it was long, while also removing itself further from the original recording with a resultant deterioration in sound quality.
« Crazy Nigger, Evil Nigger, and Gay Guerrilla » form a trio of pieces that occupies a high point in
Eastman's compositions. They were the culmination of his mature style.
Crazy Nigger is a sprawling sonic study, the last section exploring canonic form both harmonically and rhythmically, using the same process as James Tenney's Spectral Canon for Conlan Nancarrow, but notated in a more intuitive way.
In the most transcendent sense, it's music that occupies its very own place, a magical soundworld all of its own. Now issued across two LPs in their first ever vinyl release by Blume Editions, offering extensive liner notes by Mary Jane Leach and Bradford Bailey, these three seminal works by one of the most important, but neglected, American composers of the 1970s and 80s, return to the light once more. Not only are Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, and Crazy Nigger an entire rethinking of Musical Minimalism, but they ferociously blow the doors of what classical music can be seen to be.
Edition of 300 copies. Color Vinyl. 180gr Audiophile pressing. Including printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, plus an original insert that functions as Obi. Housed in a fold-out outer sleeve. Vinyl Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi.
21,00€
Out of stock
LP
Sarah HENNIES
“Embedded Environments”
Through a remarkable and singular body of work, over the course of the last decade, like storm beginning as whisper on the horizon, the composer and percussionist Sarah Hennies has slowly emerged as one of the definitive voices of her generation. Initially coming to focus as a member of Austin’s experimental music scene during the early 2000’s, before relocating to upstate New York, with a delicate, clattering grace, she has continuously offered vision, conceptual armature, crucial understanding for the contemporary proximity of avant-garde and experimental practice. Entirely of her moment, she defies what we know and expect, owing allegiance to none. Hennies has been darting around the edges of modern composition for years, but that world has never been an entirely comfortable fit, nor is it the best framework and context within which to approach her work. She is better understood in the proximity of figures like Jim O’Rourke, a creator of a countercultural music, which incorporates everything, while owing loyalty to none. Though not for aesthetics, Hennies could equally be framed with composers like Steve Reich, Arthur Russell, Julius Eastman, and Mary Jane Leach, all of whom struggled to create more inclusive musical hybrids, attacking the institutions as they stood. As these figures once were, Hennies’ position within the contemporary landscape is challenging, bristles, and requires work to understand. Her music isn’t always what it seems. What is unquestionable, is that it is entirely of this moment, and not a product of appropriation or pastiche. What she has to say, has never been said.
Comprised of two site specific compositions - Foragers, and Embedded Environments, recorded in a silo in Buffalo, NY, these recordings are a crowing moment within the long arc of Hennies’ practice. Each work is composed for a quartet of percussionists - Jason Bauers, Tim Feeney, and Bob Fullex, with Hennies contributing on vibraphone and percussion. While Foragers, and Embedded Environments are products of Hennies’ quest for elemental meaning and relationships within sound - those which lay beyond traditional understandings of structure, beat, and tone, here there is a third and unfamiliar actor in play, the space itself. Activated by the silo for which they were composed, Hennies’ broken, staggering rhythms and resonances are offered new freedom through a seductive Trojan horse, pushing them toward even more complex and jarring depths.
Foragers, and Embedded Environments delves into a realm of ideas, proximity, and place, offering a new vision for our sonic present, and what may be to come. Visionary, challenging, bristling, pared to only the essential beats or tones, this music, while beautiful and elemental, is a product of a rigorous form of conceptualism, often unfamiliar within the world of organised sound.
Comprised of two site specific compositions - Foragers, and Embedded Environments, recorded in a silo in Buffalo, NY, these recordings are a crowing moment within the long arc of Hennies’ practice. Each work is composed for a quartet of percussionists - Jason Bauers, Tim Feeney, and Bob Fullex, with Hennies contributing on vibraphone and percussion. While Foragers, and Embedded Environments are products of Hennies’ quest for elemental meaning and relationships within sound - those which lay beyond traditional understandings of structure, beat, and tone, here there is a third and unfamiliar actor in play, the space itself. Activated by the silo for which they were composed, Hennies’ broken, staggering rhythms and resonances are offered new freedom through a seductive Trojan horse, pushing them toward even more complex and jarring depths.
Foragers, and Embedded Environments delves into a realm of ideas, proximity, and place, offering a new vision for our sonic present, and what may be to come. Visionary, challenging, bristling, pared to only the essential beats or tones, this music, while beautiful and elemental, is a product of a rigorous form of conceptualism, often unfamiliar within the world of organised sound.
21,00€
Out of stock
LP
Peter CUSACK
“After Being In Holland For Two Years”
The music you are about to hear defies categorisation. Peter Cusack’s debut long player from 1977 is a peak into one of the most varied and experimental musical scrapbooks you are likely to hear. Infused with natural sounds and a healthy dose of musical abstraction, it is difficult to pigeonhole this record into any genre. It is the kind of record you wished existed while nothing really came close to the mark.
A solo album of guitar and environmental sounds, a montage filled with montages where references to and resonances of varied, often disparate soundworlds spill in every direction. The music manages to be both blatant and covert at the same time; it’s clearly, acutely disjointed and polyvocal yet strangely out of focus in regard to intent. But that’s a thing about montages: by having nothing lead causally, conventionally to the next, a radical, imaginary simultaneity occurs; you continue to experience the presence of each previous section (even though you no longer hear them) even as a new one abruptly presents itself - all this without the actual physical interference that happens with collage. Presented here for the first time since its initial pressing with extensive new liner notes by Toronto-based composer-performer Martin Arnold, writing that compliments the utterly singular notes Cusack provided for the initial release, reproduced here as well. The LP comes as a limited Edition pressing in full color cover with a fold-up tri-panel inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeves, green colored vinyl and Obi.
Peter Cusack is an improvising guitarist, field recording artist and occasional whistler. He founded Bead Records in 1974 to release the only LP by Touch Of The Sun – his shortlived duo with clarinetist Simon Mayo, but the label went on to become a collectively run initiative that produced more than 30 albums of improvised music. The following year he was among those who founded both the journal Musics and London Musicians Collective, both of which were important focal points for London’s nascent improvising community.
Cusack was a member of the eclectic freeform group Alterations with Steve Beresford, Terry Day and David Toop, as well as their irreverent seaside covers spin-off The Promenaders. He formed significant musical relationships with instrument builder Max Eastley, multi-wind instrumentalist Clive Bell, vocalist Vivienne Corringham and sampling trombone player and composer Nicholas Collins.
A solo album of guitar and environmental sounds, a montage filled with montages where references to and resonances of varied, often disparate soundworlds spill in every direction. The music manages to be both blatant and covert at the same time; it’s clearly, acutely disjointed and polyvocal yet strangely out of focus in regard to intent. But that’s a thing about montages: by having nothing lead causally, conventionally to the next, a radical, imaginary simultaneity occurs; you continue to experience the presence of each previous section (even though you no longer hear them) even as a new one abruptly presents itself - all this without the actual physical interference that happens with collage. Presented here for the first time since its initial pressing with extensive new liner notes by Toronto-based composer-performer Martin Arnold, writing that compliments the utterly singular notes Cusack provided for the initial release, reproduced here as well. The LP comes as a limited Edition pressing in full color cover with a fold-up tri-panel inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeves, green colored vinyl and Obi.
Peter Cusack is an improvising guitarist, field recording artist and occasional whistler. He founded Bead Records in 1974 to release the only LP by Touch Of The Sun – his shortlived duo with clarinetist Simon Mayo, but the label went on to become a collectively run initiative that produced more than 30 albums of improvised music. The following year he was among those who founded both the journal Musics and London Musicians Collective, both of which were important focal points for London’s nascent improvising community.
Cusack was a member of the eclectic freeform group Alterations with Steve Beresford, Terry Day and David Toop, as well as their irreverent seaside covers spin-off The Promenaders. He formed significant musical relationships with instrument builder Max Eastley, multi-wind instrumentalist Clive Bell, vocalist Vivienne Corringham and sampling trombone player and composer Nicholas Collins.
17,00€
Out of stock
LP
Mary Jane LEACH
“Pipe Dreams”
Two astonishing archival works by Mary Jane Leach are now available on vinyl for the first time, and a landmarkfrom the highly fertile 1970-80s New York minimalist scene. Having moved to New York during the middle 1970’s, she entered fray during a crucial period in the city’s creative and cultural life, joining a community of remarkably talented and ambitious Downtown composers, which, among others, included Julius Eastman (following his untimely death, she become the great champion and protector of the composer’s legacy), Arnold Dreyblatt, Arthur Russell, Ellen Fullman and Philip Corner.
Long overdue, these works are an open door - an entry into a body of thought and sound which has lingered just out view, issuing its quiet influence over the past four decades. They are the light shone on the shadows of neglect, illuminating Leach as one of the most important and underrecognized voices in her generation - those New York composers who followed the Minimalist.
Première release, available in an edition of 300 copies, a shifting and simmering body of tone and tension, doubling as meditative sonic immersion, an other-worldly sound environment, etched in wax.
Long overdue, these works are an open door - an entry into a body of thought and sound which has lingered just out view, issuing its quiet influence over the past four decades. They are the light shone on the shadows of neglect, illuminating Leach as one of the most important and underrecognized voices in her generation - those New York composers who followed the Minimalist.
Première release, available in an edition of 300 copies, a shifting and simmering body of tone and tension, doubling as meditative sonic immersion, an other-worldly sound environment, etched in wax.
21,00€
Out of stock
LP
Jocy DE OLIVEIRA
“Estórias Para Voz, Instrumentos Acústicos e Eletrônicos”
The legendary debut of Jocy De Oliveira - and a landmark classic from the 70s Brazilian Electronic music scene. To quote Keith Fullerton Whitman, this is the “lost Tropicalia / Psych / free-Vocal / Ring-Modulator freakout / jam hybrid that you’ve only dreamt about!” It is difficult to overstate the importance of Jocy De Oliveira. Defined by a body of singular music spanning seven decades, within the histories and continuing legacies of avant-garde practice, she is without equivalent. Her work is a lens - a window into breadth, idealism, and actualities of her many eras - of all the possibilities they’ve held. While she remains a widely celebrated voice in her own country - Brazil, perhaps more than any other figure, Oliveira’s life and career, with her album Estórias Para Voz, Instrumentos Acústicos e Eletrônicos from 1981 - resonating through a shimmering body of organised sound, unveils truths lingering in the shadows - histories long suppressed and lost - the sins suffered by the Latin American avant-garde, with the actualities of its astounding heights.
Oliveira began her career as a concert pianist, dedicated to the cutting edge works of the avant-garde. She left Brazil at young age to study in America and Europe, before being recruited by major orchestras across both continents - working under Stravinsky, and having pieces written for her and premiering of works by Berio, Xenakis, Santoro, Cage, and Manuel Enriquez. Her rendering of Messiaen’s Catalogue D’Oiseaux is still widely held as the definitive version. During the early 1960’s, Oliveira shifted her efforts toward composition. A wildly restless creative mind, she embarked on a process of folding organised sounds across nearly every context it could inhabit - public and private interventions, theatre, installations, film, video, tape, as much as the concert hall - blurring the lines between performance and composition, incorporating diverse media well beyond the world of sound. In 1961, within a collaborative theatre work written with Luciano Berio - Berio Apague Meu Spot Light, she instigated the first performance of electronic music staged in Brazil. In 1968 she joined Pauline Oliveros and Annea Lockwood as one of the only women asked to contribute to the legendary publication Source: Music of the Avant Garde - entering its fourth and seventh editions, and became its sole Latin American contributor. Only the beginnings of what, over the coming decades, would rise as her singular and astounding body of achievement and work.
Released in 1981, during the last years of her country’s military dictatorship, Estórias Para Voz, Instrumentos Acústicos e Eletrônicos was met by controversy before quickly sinking from view - heard by almost no one beyond Brazil’s borders. Among the most astounding realisations of electroacoustic process ever recorded - a work of shimmering beauty and potential, across its two sides, Oliveira yields works which level the field. A series of sonic stories for voice, and acoustic and electronic instruments - prepared piano, violin, percussion, synthesizers, electric celesta, etc, it the album’s singularity, culture, humanity, and introspection which can not be displaced. Like its composer, Estórias Para Voz, Instrumentos Acústicos e Eletrônicos is Brazilian, and to be Brazilian, is to be many things at once. It’s works draws on a diverse range of the country’s musics and percussion traditions, as well as Indian raga structures, and Japanese Shomyo singing - inspired in part by the sounds of immigrant communities within Sao Paulo, the city where Oliveira grew up. Across the album’s breadth, electronic music returns home - distilling the entirety of Oliveira’s being, radically diverse culture, and idealism. A work of profound democracy, optimism, and truth - reforming history, and in so doing, placing the future of the avant-garde back into its own hands.
Reissued for the first time since it original release, this marks the return of one of the 20th century’s most important electronic works. Presented with the care and craft for which Blume editions has become known, these are the wonders of art - the towering heights of sounds - the realm where countless possible utopias unfold. The LP comes as a limited edition, in full color cover with a printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, Red colored vinyl and an original insert that functions as Obi as well.
Oliveira began her career as a concert pianist, dedicated to the cutting edge works of the avant-garde. She left Brazil at young age to study in America and Europe, before being recruited by major orchestras across both continents - working under Stravinsky, and having pieces written for her and premiering of works by Berio, Xenakis, Santoro, Cage, and Manuel Enriquez. Her rendering of Messiaen’s Catalogue D’Oiseaux is still widely held as the definitive version. During the early 1960’s, Oliveira shifted her efforts toward composition. A wildly restless creative mind, she embarked on a process of folding organised sounds across nearly every context it could inhabit - public and private interventions, theatre, installations, film, video, tape, as much as the concert hall - blurring the lines between performance and composition, incorporating diverse media well beyond the world of sound. In 1961, within a collaborative theatre work written with Luciano Berio - Berio Apague Meu Spot Light, she instigated the first performance of electronic music staged in Brazil. In 1968 she joined Pauline Oliveros and Annea Lockwood as one of the only women asked to contribute to the legendary publication Source: Music of the Avant Garde - entering its fourth and seventh editions, and became its sole Latin American contributor. Only the beginnings of what, over the coming decades, would rise as her singular and astounding body of achievement and work.
Released in 1981, during the last years of her country’s military dictatorship, Estórias Para Voz, Instrumentos Acústicos e Eletrônicos was met by controversy before quickly sinking from view - heard by almost no one beyond Brazil’s borders. Among the most astounding realisations of electroacoustic process ever recorded - a work of shimmering beauty and potential, across its two sides, Oliveira yields works which level the field. A series of sonic stories for voice, and acoustic and electronic instruments - prepared piano, violin, percussion, synthesizers, electric celesta, etc, it the album’s singularity, culture, humanity, and introspection which can not be displaced. Like its composer, Estórias Para Voz, Instrumentos Acústicos e Eletrônicos is Brazilian, and to be Brazilian, is to be many things at once. It’s works draws on a diverse range of the country’s musics and percussion traditions, as well as Indian raga structures, and Japanese Shomyo singing - inspired in part by the sounds of immigrant communities within Sao Paulo, the city where Oliveira grew up. Across the album’s breadth, electronic music returns home - distilling the entirety of Oliveira’s being, radically diverse culture, and idealism. A work of profound democracy, optimism, and truth - reforming history, and in so doing, placing the future of the avant-garde back into its own hands.
Reissued for the first time since it original release, this marks the return of one of the 20th century’s most important electronic works. Presented with the care and craft for which Blume editions has become known, these are the wonders of art - the towering heights of sounds - the realm where countless possible utopias unfold. The LP comes as a limited edition, in full color cover with a printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, Red colored vinyl and an original insert that functions as Obi as well.
21,00€
Out of stock
LP
Bruce NAUMAN
“Soundtrack From First Violin Film”
When speaking of most artists, critical value is generally gauged by evaluating contributions to existing fields. Bruce Nauman is different. His influence is singular. The change his ideas provoked, unequaled. Since the mid 1960’s, he has laid the groundwork – in thought, context, practice, and materiality, for nearly every fine-artist that has followed in his wake. He is the towering pillar of conceptual thinking. Even those who do not directly draw on the ground he gained, must contended with a world in his image.
Initially issued by Tanglewood Press in 1969 - a component of the art multiples edition 7 Objects/69 (also including David Bradshaw, Eva Hesse, Stephen Kaltenbach, Alan Saret, Richard Serra, and Keith Sonnier), Soundtrack from First Violin Film is a crucial element in Nauman’s diverse the canon of contributions - bridging the emerging practices of performance, video, and sound. For an artist smashing boundaries and building anew, it is a near perfect work. Blume’s release (along with the Die Schachtel's one), marks the first time this seminal work has been available to a broader audience, making it a historic event.
Soundtrack from First Violin Film, while resembling music, is one of the earliest gestures of sound art as it has come to be understood. It falls within Nauman’s larger body of solitary actions and performances. In 1968, the artist moved briefly to New York, occupying Jasper Johns’ then vacant studio in the Hamptons, beginning to build the body of work for his first solo show at Leo Castelli Gallery - documenting them in what became the very first works of video art. Within the larger body of effort, emerged a series of works featuring him playing the violin. It is from this world, that the LP Soundtrack from First Violin Film, with its disembodies sounds, grew.
Nauman’s violin works, as the exist in the world, are only distant cousins of performance and compositions. They are objects - doubling the signifiers of music and the body back upon themselves. Rather seeking entirely new and liberated sonic realms, they employ conceptual practice, instrument, and rhythm to strike direct confrontation - sculpting something far more challenging and difficult to define. These works resemble music, challenge expectations of it, but are not that thing. They could be understood as a conceptual inversion of recordings by John Cage or of Musique Concrète. Rather than seeking to utilize non-instrumental sources to create music, Nauman used instrumental sounds and references to make something which is not music at all – the figuration of an idea - highlighting the dimensional possibilities of meaning, and the elasticity of language. In addition to being seminal works of conceptual art, among the earliest gestures which propose sound as a singular material surrogate for painting and sculpture, Soundtrack from First Violin Film - which also includes the works Violin Problem Two (Playing Two Notes Very Close Together) and Rhythmic Stamping (Four Rhythms in Preparation for Video Tape Problems) is a member of the body of work which established the terms for nearly all Sound Art to follow. Often overshadowed by its creator’s astounding body of work during this period, when isolated, it is profoundly important gesture with the history of art and experimental practice.
Edition of 300 copies, the LP comes in full color cover with printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, yellow colored vinyl and an original insert that functions as Obi as well.
Initially issued by Tanglewood Press in 1969 - a component of the art multiples edition 7 Objects/69 (also including David Bradshaw, Eva Hesse, Stephen Kaltenbach, Alan Saret, Richard Serra, and Keith Sonnier), Soundtrack from First Violin Film is a crucial element in Nauman’s diverse the canon of contributions - bridging the emerging practices of performance, video, and sound. For an artist smashing boundaries and building anew, it is a near perfect work. Blume’s release (along with the Die Schachtel's one), marks the first time this seminal work has been available to a broader audience, making it a historic event.
Soundtrack from First Violin Film, while resembling music, is one of the earliest gestures of sound art as it has come to be understood. It falls within Nauman’s larger body of solitary actions and performances. In 1968, the artist moved briefly to New York, occupying Jasper Johns’ then vacant studio in the Hamptons, beginning to build the body of work for his first solo show at Leo Castelli Gallery - documenting them in what became the very first works of video art. Within the larger body of effort, emerged a series of works featuring him playing the violin. It is from this world, that the LP Soundtrack from First Violin Film, with its disembodies sounds, grew.
Nauman’s violin works, as the exist in the world, are only distant cousins of performance and compositions. They are objects - doubling the signifiers of music and the body back upon themselves. Rather seeking entirely new and liberated sonic realms, they employ conceptual practice, instrument, and rhythm to strike direct confrontation - sculpting something far more challenging and difficult to define. These works resemble music, challenge expectations of it, but are not that thing. They could be understood as a conceptual inversion of recordings by John Cage or of Musique Concrète. Rather than seeking to utilize non-instrumental sources to create music, Nauman used instrumental sounds and references to make something which is not music at all – the figuration of an idea - highlighting the dimensional possibilities of meaning, and the elasticity of language. In addition to being seminal works of conceptual art, among the earliest gestures which propose sound as a singular material surrogate for painting and sculpture, Soundtrack from First Violin Film - which also includes the works Violin Problem Two (Playing Two Notes Very Close Together) and Rhythmic Stamping (Four Rhythms in Preparation for Video Tape Problems) is a member of the body of work which established the terms for nearly all Sound Art to follow. Often overshadowed by its creator’s astounding body of work during this period, when isolated, it is profoundly important gesture with the history of art and experimental practice.
Edition of 300 copies, the LP comes in full color cover with printed inner sleeve housing a Nagaoka anti-static record sleeve, yellow colored vinyl and an original insert that functions as Obi as well.
21,00€
Out of stock
LP
Alessandra NOVAGA
“Movimenti Lunari”
Alessandra Novaga delivers a stunning new LP album, a compelling investigation of her resonantly spacious guitar playing, which dismantles the instrument’s unique properties through relentlessness. Movimenti Lunari speaks of the relentlessness of natural forces. Something that seems to have no development, but instead advances inexorably. A form developing out of a memory progressively coming into focus; never still, constantly pulsating and vibrating with new elements. Beyond any rational, analytic thought, a sound that belongs to remembrance.
Sandro Mussida’s In Memoria questions this relationship between movement and stillness in the form of a piece of music. The piece is a meditation around memory, technology and sound: the repeating theme recalls bells chiming over and over that, drawn out into lines as long as the horizon. Francesco Gagliardi’s Untitled, January, speaks of a sound evoked by an image. A photograph. A foggy landscape seen from a train. Accompanied by a single instruction: ‘A drone, or drones. Any duration’.
Simultaneosuly timely and timeless, Movimenti Lunari has the feel of artistic invention, a canvas of delicacy melding into intense streams of sound.
Sandro Mussida’s In Memoria questions this relationship between movement and stillness in the form of a piece of music. The piece is a meditation around memory, technology and sound: the repeating theme recalls bells chiming over and over that, drawn out into lines as long as the horizon. Francesco Gagliardi’s Untitled, January, speaks of a sound evoked by an image. A photograph. A foggy landscape seen from a train. Accompanied by a single instruction: ‘A drone, or drones. Any duration’.
Simultaneosuly timely and timeless, Movimenti Lunari has the feel of artistic invention, a canvas of delicacy melding into intense streams of sound.
17,00€
In stock
3 CD
Reinhold FRIEDL & Dirk DRESSELHAUS
“Real time”
Reinhold Friedl and Dirk Dresselhaus are coming from really different backgrounds: Dresselhaus released since the late ninties as Schneider TM several experimental-electronic Freakpop recordings. He started in the 80ies Indipendent rock/pop-postpunk and developed his personal approach to sound and structura as an autodidact, starting with guitar effect devices and 4-track homerecording. Reinhold Friedl studied mathematics and music, got scolarships and international commissions, and built up the ensemble Zeitkratzer, disrespecting all musical frontiers. So it’s not astonishing, that both met for the first time, when Zeitkratzer performed Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music: Dirk Dresselhaus was restless enthusiastic about this unrestrained contemporary music group, succeeding to devote itself to the instrumentation of purely tuned guitar feedback. Dresselhaus and Friedl started their cooperation, that happened over years in studios only: what happen’s if you put those strange inside-piano sounds - another domain where Friedl set standards - or those powerfull hupe piano-drones into Schneider TM’s electronic devices, modulating them with an incredible complex Feedback system and recursive effect settings ? Sometimes violent, sometimes subtile, mostly large-scale sound fields, which always work out only one sound or noise, developing an overwhelming impact. Reinhold Friedl plays pianoforte, harmonics, horse hair, metal sheet, fishing line, metal tube: inside-piano, extended piano; Dirk Dresselhaus plays oscillator, spring reverb, isolator, memory man, digital delay, mixing desk, lfo, noise generator, vibrator - time machine, pitch shifter, ring modulator.
26,00€