In stock
CD
Keith ROWE
“Absence”
"Friday the 6th of November 2015 was an important day for me. Christian Kobi had invited me to take part in his »zoom in« festival in Bern. Earlier that day I visited the Kunst Museum, looking at the work of Cuno Amiet (1868-1961), recalling the work of an earlier Camille Pissarro, interesting contributions from Felix Vallotton (1835-1925), also an very important exhibition of how photography had influenced Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) called “Lautrec’s Photographic Eye”.
What struck me was how the fashion of the day became aged, yet the TL paintings stayed fresh, and that his drawings were fantastic. Connected to the TL photos was film of the American dancer Loie Fuller’s (1862-1928) Fire Dance. Adolf Wölfli’s (1864-1930) large work Memoriam (1926).
For my solo in the festival I used a long lapstick guitar, Boss RC-3, Boss PS-3, six band EQ, Sony ICF-SW22 and Roberts R984 radios. two contact mics, and a metal strip.
November 2015 marked the end of the first year of living with Parkinson's. During that year the right hand tremor was becoming more and more uncontrollable, to the point I could not conceive of how in the future I could manage solo performances. During that year I had experimented with different anti-shaking set-ups, in attempts to work around the tremor caused by stress and anxiety of performing solos.
It was during the 33min solo on the 6th of November in Bern that I concluded that I did not want to continue performing solos, and almost immediately from that day onwards I declined invitations to perform as a soloist. The only exception was three performances of a 20mins Click piece based on using pre-recorded material, meaning all I had to do was press the start button, these events were performed in complete darkness.
Retirement, or stepping away, is difficult and painful. It requires a recognition of certain realities, that you are not important, that the world does not care that you have stopped performing solos, actually the world does not notice that you have stopped, life outside your bubble continues, get used to it, you are not at the centre of anything. A part of the reality is to try not to leave a big mess for others to tidy up after you have left the departure lounge, retirement is an opportunity where you are able to discard all the junk you’ve accumulated.
I want to share with you a recording of that 33 mins solo from Bern before it too departs for the dustbin. An important moment in the solo is at 12:10 thru 12:21 where the Parkinson's tremor frequency (around 300bpm) can be heard, and it’s around this moment I decide not to solo again."
Keith Rowe
Mastered by Taku Unami
15,00€
In stock
CD
Yan JUN / Zhu WENBO
“Twice”
Yan Jun:
time assignment for layer B
voice on layer A
field recording with fingers and steps on layer B
Zhu Wenbo:
time assignment for layer A
snare drum, digital piano, upright piano, clarinet, audio signal generator on layer A
printer, cassette duplicator, scanner, audio signal generator, taped mandolin on layer B
Yan Jun: recorded in Beijing, Feb 2021
Zhu Wenbo: recorded in Qingdao and Beijing, Sept 2020 - Feb 2021
15,00€
In stock
CD
Anastassis PHILIPPAKOPOULOS
“Wind and light”
Greek composer Anastassis Philippakopoulos has been a member of the Wandelweiser composers collective since 2003. He pursues his own compositional style to create a new kind of tonal music, deeply associated with his individuality and the surroundings of his life in Athens, a unique blend of stoic minimalism, the warm colors of modern romanticism, and the introspective depth of Zen.
"For many years I have concentrated my attention on modal monophonic melodies. In my pieces I want to bring a balance between western and eastern musical traditions, but also between remote past and present. This balance is subjective. I care a lot to find a connectedness between the tones of the melodies. The deeper the connectedness I gradually find, the more simple and plain seems the melody." (Anastassis Philippakopoulos)
‘wind and light’ consists of four solo clarinet pieces and three solo piano pieces written by Philippakopoulos, inspired by nature in Greece. The clarinet pieces were performed by Swiss composer/clarinetist Jürg Frey, recorded in Athens in 2016, and the piano pieces were performed by Philippakopoulos himself, recorded in Athens in 2019 to complete this album.
“When I was listening to the seven pieces together, I experienced this feeling of ‘landscape/bell in a distance'. I hear the clarinet as the breath of a human being, and the piano as the sounds in the landscape I hear from a distance. This duality opens a wide space, and I was really surprised when I listened to this for the first time, because I didn't expect something like that in the context of an album, a poetic relationship between the human and the landscape.” (Jürg Frey)
15,00€
Out of stock
CD
Melaine DALIBERT
“Night blossoms”
'night blossoms' is French composer/pianist Melaine Dalibert’s sixth solo album, consisting of new compositions from 2019-2021. Of the six pieces on this album, 'A Rebours', 'Windmill', 'Eolian Scape', and 'Sisters' were written around the same time as most of the pieces for his 2020 album 'Infinite Ascent'. While 'Infinite Ascent' featured his intuitive compositions in a pop style, 'night blossoms' features works further developed with his algorithmic approach, which has been his long-term pursuit as a composer.
'A Rebours', which is a cousin to his 2019 piece 'Litanie', was written based on a binary coding of the retrograde sequence. 'Windmill' was composed based on a cellular automaton that generates patterns on a Lydian scale. 'Eolian Scape' is a toccata-style piece that makes a chain of different polyrhythmic states progressively integrating all the notes of the modal scale. 'Sisters', originally written for two pianos, takes the form of a canon, with the patterns of different periodicities superimposed, creating an undulating polyrhythm that gradually changes harmonic colors. The first three pieces were played on a muted upright piano to control the harmonic saturation which could result from the repetition of the patterns at a fast tempo, creating intimate colors.
The two pieces 'Yin' and 'Yang' are based on a random melodic thread running through the keyboard, with a zigzag of rising and falling musical intervals but following strict rules. Only the notes of the pentatonic mode of F-sharp mode (black keys) were played in 'Yin', while only those of the pentatonic mode of C (white keys) were played in 'Yang'. Deriving from the same algorithm, these two pieces complement each other while having different forms.
“Since my composition of 'ressac', I had the idea in mind to add a kind of electronic shadow, supporting the long moments of resonance, as a free counterpoint to my most minimal algorithmic compositions.” (Melaine Dalibert)
In response to Dalibert’s idea, David Sylvian contributed his sound work to 'Yin' and 'Yang', delicately fluctuating and echoing electronic shadows of piano tones, adding depth and dimensions to Dalibert's algorithmic compositions.
The album title 'night blossoms' was conceived by Sylvian, who also contributed his artwork for the album cover, as he also did for all three of Dalibert’s previous elsewhere CDs: ‘Musique pour le lever du jour’, ‘Cheminant’, and ‘Infinite Ascent’.
15,00€
In stock
2 CD
Dave SEIDEL
“Involution”
From the liner notes by Dean Rosenthal: XI Records announce the release of Dave Seidel's new double-CD, Involution. The work contained on this recording represents Dave Seidel's second foray into the realm of releasing a full-length recording. But this new milestone was not reached until he had long immersed himself in the experimental scene in NYC in the 1980s and 1990s, working closely with established experimental music pioneers Lois V Vierk and Guy Klucevsek among others. Seidel's own composing and performing grew, blossoming into live performances in the 2000s and 2010s, allowing further exploration into programming and experimenting with sonority and algorithmic sonification. What we hear on this recording is the care and detail of his passion for these two features of composition and a steady integration of them. This leads us to the two pieces heard here: "Involution" and "Hexany Permutations". In thinking of sonority, Seidel has spoken of the strong influence of La Monte Young's use of perfectly-tuned intervals and Young's ideal of previously unheard sounds, those that may engender new sensations and emotions in the listener. But Seidel also confirms the influence of the work of Alvin Lucier, in particular the Orpheus Variations. For Seidel and his sonorities, he has found little use for the 12-note chromatic tempered system, no doubt the ubiquity of this universal tuning of Western music having too few possibilities for his ear. The question then appears: how does he apply this desire to explore new forms of sonority outside the well-tempered system and, for our purposes, in these pieces? The first CD in this set presents Seidel's composition "Involution", heard in three sections. The music is presented as an expansion of slowly-changing sonorities that explore the harmonic spaces inherent in certain microtonal tunings and scales, or modes within those tunings. Each section employs a different tuning and a different set of scales or modes and uses a combination of all the different technologies Seidel has been working with over the past several years: Csound, modular synthesizer, and pedals. "Hexany Permutations", the music that the second CD of this release contains, hints at the same concerns of sonority heard in Involution but tackles the composing slightly differently, with musical results of differing proportions. In this piece, the structure of the piece plays an equal if not more dominant role than the microtonal sonorities explored.
14,00€
In stock
Book + CD
David TOOP
“Field Recording and Fox Spirits”
Field Recording and Fox Spirits is a collection of personal recordings -- from the field, from performance, from interviews -- that sketch out the breadth of David Toop's work over the past five decades. The recordings exist both as individual memories and as a hazy auditory daydream-like collage woven together by Lawrence English. Additionally, the edition includes a 40-page book, consisting of an extended in conversation with David Toop, which features extensive visual works and photographs from his archive.
From David Toop: "What are field recordings? 'My memory is not what it used to be, David,' my grandfather, Syd Senior, said to me as we huddled round a fireplace in 1979. Thanks to a cassette tape I have the memory of his gradual loss of memory, hearing him speak of Queen Victoria's funeral and the severity of patriotism back in those old days, 1901. Syd Senior is long dead, no longer part of the field of living relations but still within the field of memories that can be revived by technology, albeit an old one that squeaks like a mouse, hisses like a cat. Where is the field? The field is populated by all the ravishing, painful, poignant, nondescript moments of remembered life. Field recordings forget, just as memories forget. My recording of Ornette Coleman forgets that he fell asleep as we were talking together. I sat quietly, waiting for him to wake; the tape machine continued its work, oblivious. During lockdown, a warm spring day, I sat working in the garden. A small fox appeared close to me, started, retreated into the shelter of plants by my pond. I took a photo with my phone but when I looked at the image no fox was visible. Earlier that day I had been reading Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio, a collection of short stories written by Pu Songling during the course of his life in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century. In many of these tales, fox spirits inhabit the physical spaces of living humans in a variety of guises. Some are malicious; some benign. Their presence in the material world is wrong and yet accepted as either a temporary nuisance or a blessing that would later be regretted..."
18,00€
Out of stock
CD
Robert ASHLEY
“Foreign Experiences”
This new release from Lovely Music features Robert Ashley's famous ensemble, the "band" who interpreted his work for 20 years, from 1992 through 2012. They included Sam Ashley, Thomas Buckner, Marghreta Cordero, Tom Hamilton, Jacqueline Humbert, Joan La Barbara, and Amy X Neuburg. This recording was made at the Hebbel Theater, Berlin on May 12, 1995. The opera was also heard live at the Festival d'Avignon, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Musica Strasbourg, and Site Santa Fe. Foreign Experiences is one of the opera tetralogy that Ashley wrote in the early 1990s, following Perfect Lives (LCD 4917CD/LDVD 4917DVD) and Atalanta (Act of God) (LCD 3301CD, LCD 3303CD). He would give it the overall title (also the name of one of the component operas) Now Eleanor's Idea. These four operas would follow the stories of some of the characters who populated Perfect Lives a decade earlier. We met Don last year when Lovely Music released a CD of a new Ashley "band" performing Improvement (Don Leaves Linda) (LCD 5002CD) at the Kitchen, New York. In Foreign Experiences "Don gets a job at a small college in the southwest. Once there, against all expectations, everything goes wrong. He loses his family and friends, he loses his car, he fears that he will lose his mind." He comes to believe that he has been given a mission, to learn about premonitions and he embarks on a journey to find the wise man who will give him priceless information. Linda thinks he plan is foolish; Don thinks he has no choice. But is the opera really "about" Don and Linda? "Opera likes to simplify and enlarge its characters to make them fit grand themes. Mr. Ashley goes in the opposite direction and arrives at the cosmos just as easily. Mundane chitchat about good eating habits or car repair turns to metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, not to mention psychiatry, before we know it." -- Bernard Holland, The New York Times (November 21, 1994) The live recording was made by Tom Hamilton and Cas Boumans, and this release has been edited mixed by Tom Hamilton. A slipcase includes a jewel case with a four-page folder, and a 96-page booklet of the full libretto.
18,00€
Out of stock
3 CD
David FIRST & THE WESTERN ENISPHERE
“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 compact and ruminative to spacious and serene and back. In this triple-CD, two-and-half-hours of sonic tessellation, First has alchemized his own personal opposites like never before, combining and transmuting his free-jazz experience with avant-legend Cecil Taylor, his influential noise-rock n' roll band Notekillers, his long-abiding love for minimalist, mathematical excavation on dozens of instruments, and a highly refined ear for pop-melodic architectures into a singular, epic set of vibrational possibilities that leaves very few stones unturned in his ongoing quest for the resolution of all extremes.
18,00€
Out of stock
CD
Caterina BARBIERI
“Born again in the voltage”
“Born Again In The Voltage” is an astonishing collection of electro-acoustic pieces for Buchla 200 system, cello and voice composed and produced by Caterina Barbieri at Elektronmusikstudion (SE) between 2014 and 2015. Edition of 500.
Music produced by Caterina Barbieri between August 2014 and August 2015.
Recorded and mixed at EMS (Elektronmusikstudion) in Stockholm (SE).
Buchla 200 modular synthesizer + vocals + cello.
Cello by Antonello Manzo
Includes the bonus track "Bestie Infinite" from her 2018 split LP with Eleh.
13,00€
Out of stock
CD
Caterina BARBIERI
“Patterns of Consciousness”
Patterns Of Consciousness is the powerful second full length album from analog synth composer Caterina Barbieri. Gorgeous high resolution analog textures and algorithmic melodies unfold under Barbieri's careful control, exploring the basic nature of sound and consciousness. These pieces are minimal in arrangement but maximal in presence asserting Barbieri as a unique voice in contemporary electronic music composition. Highly recommended to fans of Alessandro Cortini and Eleh.
13,00€
Out of stock
CD
Judith HAMANN
“Music for cello and humming”
Nomadic Australian cellist and composer Judith Hamann presents two collections of her sonic inquiries into shaking and humming. Her CD, Music for Cello and Humming, features two pieces for cello and humming written specifically for Hamann by composers Sarah Hennies and Anthony Pateras alongside Hamann's own "Humming Suite" and "Study for Cello and Humming." Having arisen intuitively from Hamann's investigations into shaking, just intonation, psychoacoustic phenomena, and the voice in relation to the femme presenting body in performance, humming here also references dislocation, or ventriloquism. Although teetering on the edge of audibility, the intimate and vulnerable closed-mouth sounding enters into subtle interference with her cello, drifting into acoustical beating and bringing instability to otherwise more formal grid structures. The capacity for rupture of this volatile fragility reaches its apotheosis on Hennies' "Loss," a piece that deliberately instructs Hamann to hum beyond the limits of her voice range. Going against the grain of chamber music orthodoxy, the guaranteed failure set in motion by this instruction yields a generative sound of effort reminiscent of Xenakis's storied desire for an instrumentalist to play with the sorrow of knowing they can't do everything. With an arc suggestive of sudden life change, "Loss" casts queer epistemology onto composition, positioning failure, undoing, unbecoming, and transforming as alternative ways of knowing or being. Hennies's signature composite merging of individual components here brings oral sounds that include breathing and coughing together with humming, cello, and sine waves. Like Glenn Gould's 1982 Goldberg Variations or Pauline Oliveros's Accordion and Voice, this timbral meeting of bodily utterances with consummate musicianship imbues Hamann's humming work with a breakable, human strand, here as humbling as it is uncomfortable. Music for Cello and Humming is accompanied by an essay on both recordings by Nora Fulton. It's presented alongside the LP set, Shaking Studies (BF 017LP). Judith Hamann undertook her doctoral studies with renowned cellist Charles Curtis, with whom she is currently engaged in a discourse-based project, "Materialities of Realisation." She has additionally demonstrated a superlative capacity for improvisation and engagement with sonic arts through work with artists Dennis Cooper, Éliane Radigue, Áine O'Dwyer, Ilan Volkov, Toshimaru Nakamura, La Monte Young, and Marian Zazeela, Golden Fur, Jessika Kenney, Anna Homler, Yvette Janine Jackson, and Lori Goldston, among others. Her recorded appearances include Tashi Wada's Duets, Graham Lambkin's Community, Alvin Lucier's Illuminated By The Moon, and Gossamers, with Rosalind Hall. Edition of 500.
17,00€
Out of stock
book + 2 CD
Steve RODEN
“…i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces”
*** 2021 restock ***
Edited by Steve Roden. 184 page hardback book with 2 CDs. 150 full-color photographs. The CDs feature 51 vintage recordings from 1925-1955.
“… i listen to the wind that obliterates my traces brings together a collection of early photographs related to music, a group of 78rpm recordings, and short excerpts from various literary sources that are contemporary with the sound and images. It is a somewhat intuitive gathering, culled from artist Steve Roden’s collection of thousands of vernacular photographs related to music, sound, and listening. The subjects range from the PT Barnum-esque Professor McRea - “Ontario’s Musical Wonder” (pictured with his complex sculptural one man band contraption) - to anonymous African-American guitar players and images of early phonographs. The images range from professional portraits to ethereal, accidental, double exposures - and include a range of photographic print processes, such as tintypes, ambrotypes, cdvs, cabinet cards, real photo postcards, albumen prints, and turn-of-the-century snapshots. The two CDs bring together a variety of recordings, including one-off amateur recordings, regular commercial releases, and early sound effects records. there is no narrative structure to the book, but the collision of literary quotes (Hamsun, Lagarkvist, Wordsworth, Nabakov, etc.). Recordings and images conspire towards a consistent mood that is anchored by the book’s title, which binds such disparate things as an early recording of an American cowboy ballad, a poem by a Swedish Nobel laureate, a recording of crickets created artificially, and an image of an itinerant anonymous woman sitting in a field, playing a guitar. The book also contains an essay by Roden.”
37,00€
Out of stock
CD
Aki ONDA / Nao NISHIHARA
“Kouya-e-to”
ki Onda has lived and based his activities in New York for many years. His solo work includes "Cassette Memories," a field recording project using portable cassette recorders that has been ongoing for the past 30 years, as well as concerts, installations and exhibitions in countries around the world. Onda has collaborated frequently with a diverse range of artists including Akio Suzuki, Annea Lockwood, David Toop and Rie Nakajima. Additionally, as a curator and organizer he has planned and produced a variety of festivals and events. In 2020, Onda is bringing to a close his two decades in New York and beginning new endeavors in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture.
Born in 1976, Nao Nishihara carries out sound-related activities including art and performance using sound, recordings, and musical instrument creation. Nishihara acquired a unique aesthetic and style through exchanges with dancer Min Tanaka and musician Keiji Haino, and the influences of ethnomusicologist Fumio Koizumi and Shoichi Ozawa, who was known for his folklore collection. This is apparent in his performances combining sound-making objects and bodily movement. He enthusiastically carries out installations, exhibitions and performances both inside and outside Japan.
Onda and Nishihara started collaborating in 2015, when the latter stayed for a time in New York. In November 2016, when Nishihara visited New York again, the two took advantage of the opportunity and gave a performance at ISSUE Project Room's theater at 22 Boerum Place in Brooklyn. The edited recording of that performance is contained in the five tracks on this CD.
Onda used tapes, feedback, amps, bells, cymbals and found objects, while Nishihara used bells, Chinese cymbals, bird and animal calls, wood and metal pieces, a self-made bowing instrument and more. The venue, with its marble floors and high, arched ceiling, produces out-of-the-ordinary sound reverberation. To make the best possible use of the space's characteristics, Onda and Nishihara placed various instruments, devices and objects here and there around the room, added physical movement, and produced diverse sounds that were rough and wild at times, subtle and delicate at others.
The CD includes detailed liner notes (in English and Japanese) by Nick Scavo, who experienced the performance live in the venue.
Aki Onda: tapes, feedback, amps, bells, cymbals, found objects
Nao Nishihara: bells, Chinese cymbals, bird & aminal calls, wood & metal pieces, self-made bowing instrument, "Sloth," Turkish sipsi, nose flute
Recorded by Bob Bellerue at ISSUE Project Room, Brooklyn, New York
Edited and mixed by Aki Onda
Mastered by Sean McCann
14,00€
Out of stock
CD
Ken IKEDA / Rie NAKAJIMA
“Signal and Signaless”
Ken Ikeda is a musician and artist who lived and worked for many years in New York and London. He has provided music for artists and video creators such as Mariko Mori, Tadanori Yokoo, Darren Almond and David Lynch, and released solo and collaboration CDs on labels including Touch (UK), Matchless (UK), Spekk (Japan) and Baskaru (France). From Ftarri, the year 2018 saw the release of the CD Ink on Paper (meenna-978), an improvised trio performance by Ikeda, Toshimaru Nakamura and Tomoyoshi Date. Ikeda moved back to Japan from London in 2020; he is currently based in Tokyo.
Rie Nakajima is an artist who lives in London and carries out numerous performance and installation projects throughout the world. These include collaborations with David Toop, David Cunningham, Phill Niblock, Pierre Berthet and others, and the duo project O YAMA O with Keiko Yamamoto. In recent years she has also been performing with alto sax/clarinet player Akira Sakata.
Ikeda and Nakajima have been acquainted and occasionally performed together since the time when both lived in London. A duo performance by the two was included as a track on the CD release Floating Weeds (901 Editions, 2019). When Nakajima made a homecoming trip to Japan at the end of 2020, she got in touch with Ikeda (who was then living in Tokyo) and a performance by the two at Ftarri was arranged for January 5, 2021. This CD is the complete recording of the two sets in that concert. Both artists used their main instruments of recent years: Ikeda placed a synthesizer on a table, while Nakajima arranged small objects such as dishes, wood chips and cans on the floor and placed small motors on them to produce sound. She also used Ftarri's upright piano. Imaginative, flexible, sometimes dynamic synthesizer sound overlaps with the colorfully, delicately penetrating sound of myriad small analog noises and piano keyboard sounds, creating an exquisite sonic space of a kind that could only be achieved by these two musicians.
Ken Ikeda: synthesizer
Rie Nakajima: objects, motors, piano
12,00€
Out of stock
2 CD
Frédéric TENTELIER
“On établit un temps, on creuse un épais”
Artist and musician Frédéric Tentelier creates musical theater shows and sound installations. He composes his music with field recordings, Fender Rhodes, organs, banjo, objects... His music is recorded in particular spaces, from graphic scores, topographic maps, harmonic translations or improvisations... He considers field recording as a harmonic and musical material, but also as a temporal material structuring musical forms. Time and silence are the bases of his musical forms. In this disc, he assembles various materials accumulated in the spring of 2020 for 50 days in a row. These are harmonic translations of words or sentences heard on the radio. It is a construction reflecting a particular period during which suspended time and introspection were favorable to him.
Composed, performed, recorded, assembled and mixed by Frédéric Tentelier, March-April 2020, at his studio Abri Noïr on the Opal Coast, France
Mastered by Bruno Duplant
18,50€
Out of stock
CD
Cyprien BUSOLINI / Seijiro MURAYAMA
“Busolini Murayama Duet”
Born in 1978, French viola player Cyprien Busolini is active mainly in the contemporary classical and improvised music fields. He is a member of the contemporary music groups Ensemble Daedalus and ONCEIM, and also performs in the early music group Ensemble Fratres. Seijiro Murayama, who lives in Paris and works mainly in Europe, is a Japanese drummer/percussionist as well as frequent voice performer. He has released numerous CDs (both solos and performances with other musicians) on the Ftarri labels.
It all began when Ensemble Dedalus, of which Busolini is a member, and Murayama (using voice and drums) played together in a live musical performance of the dance production Blow the Bloody Doors Off, choreographed by Catherine Diverrès (composer: Jean-Luc Guionnet). After that (starting around 2019) the two have regularly carried out duo rehearsals.
This CD contains a single improvised music piece which could be considered the result of those rehearsals. Busolini plays viola, while Murayama forgoes the use of drums and percussion and focuses entirely on voice. As he says, "Unlike so-called 'improvisers who use their voice,' I take an approach along the lines of 'Not even I really know what's going to come out.'" The 46-minute performance was recorded in Paris on February 11, 2021.
12,00€
Out of stock
CD
Jennifer ALLUM / John BUTCHER / Ute KANNGIESSER / Eddie PREVOST
“Sounds of Assembly”
This recording marks the second meeting of this quartet. The occasion was an afternoon session organised for inclusion in Stewart Morgan's film "Eddie Prévost's Blood". A special location had been chosen - the large assembly hall of Prévost's old senior school, Addey & Stanhope in Deptford, London, where he enrolled in the mid 1950s. Coincidentally, a dozen years later John Butcher began senior school a few miles further up the Thames in Bermondsey, the neighbourhood of Eddie's childhood home. Ute Kanngiesser and Jennifer Allum met each other and Eddie when, over a decade ago, they became regular attendees of his long-running weekly music workshop in Southwark. The track titles are borrowed fromJoyce Carey's Thames-side descriptions in his novel "The Horse's Mouth".
Jennifer Allum: violin
John Butcher: saxophones
Ute Kanngiesser: cello
Eddie Prévost: percussion
14,00€
In stock
CD
Michiko OGAWA
“Solo May / 2020”
Born in Tokyo, clarinetist Michiko Ogawa has studied clarinet performance and musicology at universities and graduate schools in Japan, Germany and the U.S. She earned a bachelor's and a graduate degree from Toho Gakuen School of Music and a master's degree from the Musikhochschule Freiburg, studied with composer Jo Kondo at Ochanomizu University, and received a doctorate in contemporary music performance from the University of California (San Diego). Ogawa has appeared in many festivals inside and outside Japan including Tokyo Experimental Festival (2013), Supersense Festival of Ecstatic Music (Melbourne, 2015), the Monday Evening Concert series (Los Angeles, 2016), BIFEM (Bendigo, Australia, 2016, 2017, 2019), Brisbane International Film Festival (Brisbane, 2018), and Maerzmusik (Berlin, Germany, 2018, 2019). In 2019 she performed at Ftarri Festival along with Klaus Lang (harmonium), Johnny Chang (violin), and Samuel Dunscombe (bass clarinet). She currently lives in Berlin, where she is active on the contemporary music and experimental/improvised music scene.
This solo album contains a solo performance by Ogawa--not on the clarinet, but on a Hammond organ. The dust-covered, long-abandoned organ from the 1970s had been purchased at a bargain price. At her home in Berlin in May 2020, during the coronavirus lockdown, Ogawa recorded three pieces (18, 28 and 23 minutes long) that she'd created alone during these strange times. The Hammond organ's distinctive warm, deep and mellow timbres multiply and overlap, continuing without pause along with changes in pitch and subtle sound vibrations.
12,00€
In stock
CD
AKAIHIRUME / Yasumune MORISHIGE
“Ricca”
Yasumune Morishige and Akaihirume are musicians based in Tokyo. Morishige is a cellist who primarily performs improvisation, and collaborates with many musicians and dancers from Japan and other countries. Akaihirume is a vocalist who improvises in addition to singing her own songs. In 2015 she and computer player Carl Stone started a duo project whose activities include performances in Asia and the United States. (They also performed at Ftarri Festival in 2019).
Separately from her work with Carl Stone, Akaihirume performs in a duo with Yasumune Morishige. Over the past few years they have appeared regularly at Ftarri, Tokyo. This CD documents their performance in a concert on February 24, 2020. Morishige's subtle yet free-spirited cello playing and Akaihirume's vocals, with her creative use of effects, intertwine exquisitely and permeate every corner of the space. Consisting mainly of improvisation, the recording also includes (at the beginning and end of the performance) Akaihirume singing her own songs, accompanied by graceful melodies. The superb performances beautifully channel the musical artistry of both musicians.
12,00€
Out of stock
CD
Magnus GRANBERG
“Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth (Revised version)”
Magnus Granberg is a composer/musician based in Stockholm, Sweden. Since 2005, through his own ensemble Skogen and other experimental music groups including Ordinary Affects, Ensemble Grizzana and Insub Meta Orchestra, he has been presenting high-quality works demonstrating new compositional possibilities. Granberg's works have been released on various labels including the UK's Another Timbre. His recent activities have received a great deal of attention.
Granberg originally composed "Come Down to Earth Where Sorrow Dwelleth" in spring 2019 for the Boston-based experimental music ensemble Ordinary Affects. For the performance of this piece at Ftarri Festival, he created a revised version for sho, koto, prepared piano and electronics, and made his first trip to Japan in November 2019. On November 8, just before the festival, the four musicians met at the studio GOK Sound in Kichijoji, Tokyo, for a rehearsal and recording. This CD documents that studio recording of a 52-minute performance by Ko Ishikawa (sho), Miki Maruta (20-string koto), Granberg (prepared piano) and Toshimaru Nakamura (no-input mixing board). (At Ftarri Festival, Granberg used a piano without preparations.)
Throughout the work there's a gravity and mystical quality to the sound and the uniqueness of Magnus Granberg's artistry is amply displayed. It's interesting to compare this performance with the original version (released on Meenna in July 2020 [meenna-970]), which was performed by Ordinary Affects on violin, cello, electric guitar, vibraphone and prepared piano.
Miki Maruta: 20-string koto
Ko Ishikawa: sho
Toshimaru Nakamura: no-input mixing board
Magnus Granberg: prepared piano
12,00€
In stock
CD
KRISHNAMURTI
“Thought is the enemy”
Krishnamurti is the duo project of Italian sound artists Giovanni Lami and Lorenzo Abattoir, who aim to create a new type of soundscape using the Indian drone instrument called the shruti box.
Originally from Ravenna, Giovanni Lami has since the 2010s been known for diverse activities including his work in artist-in-residence programs, festival appearances, and exhibitions. In recent years he's released numerous recordings, especially from cassette labels. Lorenzo Abattoir, who lives in Torino, has since the latter half of the 2010s been increasing his sound installation activities, festival appearances, etc. He has also released a larger number of recordings (CDs, cassette tapes, LPs), many of them collaborations with other musicians.
This CD is made up of four pieces recorded by Krishnamurti in Torino in September 2019. Multilayered sound overlaps and reverberates throughout all of the pieces. Over a central layer of sound, other sounds are produced in a granular or swath-like manner, murmuring and bubbling as they intertwine and adhere. Tinged with dark colors and at the same time imparting a pleasant feeling, this exceptional work abounds in mysterious charm.
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
12,00€
In stock
CD
ORGANUM ELECTRONICS
“Solitude”
2021
Press release text:
"In the everlasting silence of the universe
Dark clouds reflect upon shimmering water
The voiceless radiance of solitude
Dissonant overtones in dark clouds
Pierce the eternal veil of night
The rivers rage ceaselessly
Burst
Swiftly, cloud-shadows and sunbeams
White flames burning through a dark sky
Wrapped in its own eternity
Wild and forsaken
No sound is tamed
Release and rebirth, revolve, subside and swell
Inescapable and incessant in motion
The path of that unfailing sound
A harmony
Ancient and solemn
The voiceless radiance of solitude"
David Jackman’s music, both as Organum and under his given name, is typically characterized by repetition, brevity and a deadpan aloofness. He’s made plenty of extremely short (sometimes one-sided) 7” singles, albums containing multiple slight variations on a single piece, and albums of compositional (if not sonic) minimalism. It’s Jackman’s typical move to provide very little information beyond a word, or sometimes an image. Lately, he’s been predisposed to not even providing an image; just as few words as possible on a white background, nothing more.
Naturally, he does not seem to do interviews and has no web presence. As listeners, we’re left to apprehend the music as itself. No guidance into his hermetic world. I find it refreshing. Whatever your experience of an Organum album is, that’s all you get. Thankfully, each emission is thought- provoking enough to get lost in and monolithic enough to encourage both passive and active engagement.
Howard Stelzer
14,50€
In stock
CD
ORGANUM ELECTRONICS
“Stilness”
2020
Press release text:
"A constant flow of waves
Cold, light and fluorescent
Crystallise empty feelings
The howling echoes of a fox
Somewhere in a vast open plain
An asteroid collides with the others
Flickers in the ember hollow remain
Rust slowly nurtures the machine gun
Scarred for its life
The passage to the centre of the light
Phosphorescent, the dunes seem alight
The future has passed
The past is the present"
David Jackman’s music, both as Organum and under his given name, is typically characterized by repetition, brevity and a deadpan aloofness. He’s made plenty of extremely short (sometimes one-sided) 7” singles, albums containing multiple slight variations on a single piece, and albums of compositional (if not sonic) minimalism. It’s Jackman’s typical move to provide very little information beyond a word, or sometimes an image. Lately, he’s been predisposed to not even providing an image; just as few words as possible on a white background, nothing more.
Naturally, he does not seem to do interviews and has no web presence. As listeners, we’re left to apprehend the music as itself. No guidance into his hermetic world. I find it refreshing. Whatever your experience of an Organum album is, that’s all you get. Thankfully, each emission is thought- provoking enough to get lost in and monolithic enough to encourage both passive and active engagement.
Howard Stelzer
14,50€
In stock
CD
ORGANUM ELECTRONICS
“Organum Electronics”
2019
Press release text:
"In the birth of the universe
Time stands still amidst a wild and untamable energy
Radiant light bathes and purifies solid stone pillars
Both ancient and modern
Wild vibrations touch our most innermost core and perception
Organum Electronics exists in the clear moment of the present
But its mysterious compositions lay hidden in a timeless past
Modulating oscillations mirror our most fundamental sense of being
As though a living and breathing entity would
Communicating with a life-force and language we have all but forgotten"
David Jackman’s music, both as Organum and under his given name, is typically characterized by repetition, brevity and a deadpan aloofness. He’s made plenty of extremely short (sometimes one-sided) 7” singles, albums containing multiple slight variations on a single piece, and albums of compositional (if not sonic) minimalism. It’s Jackman’s typical move to provide very little information beyond a word, or sometimes an image. Lately, he’s been predisposed to not even providing an image; just as few words as possible on a white background, nothing more.
Naturally, he does not seem to do interviews and has no web presence. As listeners, we’re left to apprehend the music as itself. No guidance into his hermetic world. I find it refreshing. Whatever your experience of an Organum album is, that’s all you get. Thankfully, each emission is thought- provoking enough to get lost in and monolithic enough to encourage both passive and active engagement.
Howard Stelzer
14,50€
In stock
CD
Giovanni Di DOMENICO
“Dust bunnies”
Dust Bunnies is Giovanni Di Domenico's first solo release for 901 Editions. Recorded in Oude Kerk Charlois with the majestic 1784's Hess pipe organ and in Klangendum / Worm studio in Rotterdam, the album beautifully merges acoustic and synthetic sounds. As pressurized air flows through the pipes, the music reminds us of desertic wind, evoking introspective passages and expansive panoramas from above where large clumps of dust are destined to roll endlessly.
13,00€
In stock
Book + CD
Steve RODEN
“Gradual small fires (and a bowl of resonant milk)”
From Steve Roden:
"gradual small fires (and a bowl of resonant milk), was commissioned by the university of hong kong’s new media school, and more specifically, the work was created initially for daniel libeskind’s building for the university’s cmc (creative media center). for the grand opening of the building, several sound and new media artists were invited to create works on site.
the work consisted of 5 different pieces – each object constructed of plexiglass, and each sound work anchored by a recording of a fire that i had made in denmark 10 years or so ago. i added sounds (such as bells, rocks, guitar, field recordings), and everything was manipulated, for the most part with analog guitar pedals.
each sound/sculpture was placed in a discreet location, generally a space that seemed to have no use. the pieces were relatively quiet, and the hope was that a student or visitor would happen upon these works accidentally, and that the piece would then offer a diversion.
my goal was to complete a piece for every photo in ruscha’s book.
along with the five works exhibited at the cmc in hong kong, a 6th piece, gradual small fire 5, was commissioned for the exhibition “sound art. sound as a medium of art” at the zkm in karlsruhe."
60-page A5 colour sewn-bound book plus CD in a cardboard wallet.
Edition of 300 copies.
25,00€
In stock
CD
Fabio PERLETTA
“Un fiocco di neve”
"Un Fiocco Di Neve" (Italian word for snowflake) is one of the possible crystallisations of an ongoing project called Nucleazione (Nucleation), started in 2017 and consisting of the accumulation of over 200 sound files and silences pulled together and randomly overlapped with no control. The five compositions of this album originate from a series of auto-generative methods. Nucleazione is exhibited as an online project where listeners can themselves experiment the non-linear creation of unstable, undefined compositions with no predetermined beginning nor end.
14,00€
Out of stock
CD
Michael RANTA
“The Great Wall / Chanta Khat”
Michael Ranta has collaborated with Takehisa Kosugi, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Jean-Claude Eloy, Conny Plank, Mike Lewis, and Hartmut Geerken, just to name a few. He was also assistant to Harry Partch and performer in the Gate 5 Ensemble in the 1960s. Additionally, Ranta performed in Stockhausen's ensemble during the 1970 World Expo in Osaka. Ranta's resume also includes recordings by Helmut Lachenmann, Herbert Brün, Toru Takemitsu, Josef Anton Riedl, Mauricio Kagel, among others. Throughout his extensive recordings and live performances, Ranta has furthered the trajectories of contemporary percussion composition alongside works for tape and electronics. His works are fully immersive which evoke vast spaces, ritual, and create an expansive presence for his accompanying multimedia commissions.
For this CD release, two of Ranta's longform pieces are included: "The Great Wall" and "Chanta Khat". Originally scored for the HT Chen Dance Company as a theater production, "The Great Wall" premiered in 1984 at the La MaMa experimental theater in New York. This highly detailed composition for electronics, voice, percussion, and tape offers a massive drone-based accompaniment for Chen's stage presentation of the legend of Meng Jiangnu. Yet, Ranta's composition also creates a fully formed soundtrack that stands beautifully on its own. The atmosphere is very much in the spirit of Kosugi's multimedia masterwork Catch Wave and Jean Claude Eloy's large-scale production Yo-In which also features Ranta.
"Chanta Khat" was completed in 1973. An early version of this piece originally premiered as part of a multimedia installation at the 1972 summer Olympics in Munich. This powerful work for tape and electronics includes Ranta's field recordings documenting his travel in Laos during a lunar eclipse earlier that same year. The piece is a haunting and equally frantic work where the local villagers are heard responding quite emotionally and viscerally to the celestial event of the day. "Chanta Khat" was later reworked and remixed in 1973 at the NHK electronic music studio in Tokyo. This version is featured here in its entirety. Packaged in a six-panel digipak with fully remastered and restored audio. Includes detailed notes by Michael Ranta and features new artwork by Timo van Luijk.
16,00€
In stock
CD
Jean-Philippe GROSS & Jérôme NOETINGER
“Nos cadavres”
There is a great tradition of exchange and correspondence work in experimental music. In the 80's, there were a lot of cassettes with musicians who had never met each other but were exchanging sounds by post mail. Nowadays it's even simpler and more obvious.
The imposed period of confinement - in France between March 17 and May 11, and between October 30 and December 15 - was ideal for restarting such projects.
Jean-Philippe Gross and Jérôme Noetinger have had the opportunity to play several times as a duo since 2009. They decided to start this new email collaboration based on the idea of the exquisite corpse. One musician created a frst sequence and sent only the last 10 seconds to the
next one who then mixed or pasted his sequence into it, and so on. The frst two "Cadavre" were published by Cafe Oto new in-house label Takuroku.
Excited by this new way of working, Jean-Philippe Gross and Jérôme Noetinger decided to go deeper into it.
Each of the fourth "Cadavre" that you will fnd on this CD was realised in one day only, each musician having only 30 minutes to build his answer.
The final result was only slightly modifed in terms of volume. The rawness of the process itself creates music that would otherwise be impossible to make. It's as beautiful as it is strange, improbable and unexpected, absurd and playful, and it is not easy to guess who does what.
Jean-Philippe Gross: Serge modular system, mixer feedback, feld recordings, treatments, radio.
Jérôme Noetinger: Revox tape recorder, cassettes, CDJ, feld recordings, treatments, radio.
8,00€
In stock
CD
TARAB
“Holes”
All sounds borrowed from various rooms, the things that happened in them, and those that come in from outside. collected and re-arranged 2020. some recordings initially made for the Amplify 2020 series, others not.
Master: Phil Julian.
Print: Ben Owen/Middle Press.
HOLES were formed as part of a research project undertaken with support from RMIT, Melbourne.
13,00€
Out of stock
2 CD
INTERSYSTEMS
“# IV”
Toronto’s infamous psychedelic multimedia collective, Intersystems, make a surprise return with a new full-length LP, #IV. Coming via Waveshaper Media, #IV is Intersystems’ first new material since 1968! Intersystems’ pioneering avant/electronic music sounded positively alien in the 1960s, and more than 50 years later, this latest body of work sounds just as otherworldly.
When they arrived on the scene in the late 1960s, Intersystems stood out from their peers. Comprised of architect Dik Zander, light sculptor Michael Hayden, poet Blake Parker, and musician John Mills-Cockell (of Syrinx, Kensington Market and more), the group mounted groundbreaking pan-sensory events and released a trilogy of defiantly disorienting records.
Where more conventional purveyors of sonic psychedelia were content with fuzztone guitar and orientalist tropes, Intersystems managed to approximate the full psychedelic experience in all its euphoric wonder and terror. Initially wrangling homespun gadgetry, feverishly spliced-together tapes, and mutant beat poetry, Intersystems were also among the very first to deploy a Moog Synthesizer; their Moog modular system was the first to be imported into Canada. Intersystems’ three vinyl LP recordings, meanwhile, justifiably became coveted collector's items given their scarce quantity and singular unsettling vision.
The reissue of Intersystems’ full discography in 2015 prompted acclaim from a number of major outlets. Among them, PopMatters hailed the set as "one of those great lost recordings (three of 'em actually) that comes from the lysergic era..." Mills-Cockell’s work in Syrinx has also been reissued to great acclaim in recent years.
Fifty-plus years after their 1968 album Free Psychedelic Poster Inside, Hayden and Mills-Cockell decided to revive the long-dormant project with a series of sessions at Hamilton's storied Grant Avenue Studio. The resultant music remains remarkably congruent with the project's original vision while clearly emerging from the present moment. With original poet/lyricist Blake Parker now deceased, Hayden and Mills-Cockell made the counterintuitive (yet strangely apt) decision to render Parker's words electronically. As the computer-synthesized voice alternates between an eerily life-like delivery and slurred cybernetic faltering, it brings a new dystopian tint to the group's anxious surrealism. Taking cues from its predecessor, Free Psychedelic Poster Inside, a modular Moog Synthesizer system is the primary instrument, yet here it offers a dynamic blend of different sonorities: barbed wire basslines, Subotnickesque chirping, gestural plumes of colour and percussive filigree.
While the group cut their teeth in the 1960s, make no mistake these new Intersystems recordings aren't a “comeback" or an attempt to rehash the "good old days". What one hears instead is the sound of Mills-Cockell and Hayden re-energizing the project, bringing with them the myriad experience they’ve accumulated in the intervening 50 years. These aural concoctions—no less perplexing than their 1960s predecessors—build upon the Intersystems foundation but very decidedly reside in the present moment, reminding listeners of just how forward-looking this group was in the first place.
12,00€
Out of stock
CD
Asmus TIETCHENS & Miki YUI
“Neues Boot”
TAL presents the first musical collaboration between Hamburg based Asmus Tietchens and Japanese artist Miki Yui, operating out of Düsseldorf for almost 20 years now. Highly respected and hugely influential artist Asmus Tietchens first made his mark on the electronic music scene in the late 1970s, whereas Miki Yui debuted her sonic settings in 1999.
Their first joint album NEUES BOOT envelops the listener with a poetic sound sensibility and a conceptual clarity which was processed and passed back and forth between their individual studios in Hamburg and Düsseldorf.
Asmus Tietchens: After Stefan Schneider suggested to release a Yui-Tietchens album on his TAL imprint Miki and I quickly developed some ideas towards our eventual collaboration.
We agreed upon an ongoing mutual exchange of material. We have both been very familiar with each other's music for a long time and we found our individual approach towards sound design to be uniquely compatible. We do not use our electronic tools in order to merely achieve the maximum of technical possibilities, but to illustrate aesthetic necessities. This entails a deliberate reduction and refined perception of the sonic characteristics of the material. Only this approach enabled us to fully realise the complete spectrum of the sounds and noises we were working with in order to construct this New Boat. Each and everyone of my treatments is e x c l u s i v e l y based on a track supplied by Miki. I added no new sound sources. Naturally the spatial and temporal dimensions of the source material were thus altered. These transformations are exactly what makes our collaboration special and unique. Very early on we had agreed on New Boat as a working title and a guiding light . Of course in the beginning we had no idea where this New Boat might take us. Now we do know. After several months of ship-building the boat has now set sails for new sonic horizons. Ahoi!
Miki Yui: The title of the album as well as the individual tracks have been inspired by conversations with Asmus. When we had a chat after one of his concerts, he told me about Kōdō, the Art or the Way of the Scent. It is a 8th century Japanese incense ceremony. Very frequently the names of Japanese incense sticks are derived from natural themes, e.g. Bairin is the plum grove, the scent of the first blossom heralding the end of winter.
This poetry, the ephemeral nature of the world reminded me of Kigo, words from a Haiku (a form of Japanese poetry), which reference a particular season or a natural phenomenon. So I chose the names of the individual pieces from Kigo as if The Boat was exploring nature whilst sailing through the seasons. Only in retrospect I realised that the titles combined create this poem:
Early spring a hazy view in the night (Oboro)
Plum groves (Bairin)
Over a Dayfly (Kagerou)
A Milkyway (Amanogawa)
Dawn (Akatsuki)
Art of fragrance (Kōdō)
On fragile thin ice (Usurai)
13,00€