In stock
CD
Pascal LE GALL
“Returns”
"RETURNS is a suite in four parts. At the beginning each part was a musical composition as such but finaly after a while the idea of an organisation of this different parts was introduced. The first part, mixed with the sound of different broken glasses, is a musical overture and introduce with his rhythms and his melodies the following parts. The three following parts are mixed with different sounds from records played on turntables with variable-speed drives.
With the intense focus of a scientist fed up with pointless repetition, Pascal takes a scalpel to composition, improvisation and performance, and (with the most basic means) examines their sameness, and their miniscule but important differences."
Original price was: 12,00€.6,00€Current price is: 6,00€.
In stock
CD
LA TÈNE & Jacques PUECH et Louis JACQUES & Jérémie SAUVAGE et Guilhem LACROUX
“Abandonnée/Maléja”
"La Tène is back with a double invitation to its third full length LP.
The hurdy-gurdy/harmonium/percussions trio welcomes two bagpipes (cabrettes and 23” to be exact), and a combo of string instruments (12-string guitar and electric bass).
Beyond the instrumentation, we’re looking at a gang of high esteemed guests: Jacques Puech, Louis Jacques, Guilhem Lacroux and Jérémie Sauvage, whom works are given their due credit (with the La Novià collective and its multiple variations, the France group, Super Parquet, the Standard-In-Fi label, etc.), are at ease with fuelling the traditional ball dance floor (literally in its wooden meaning) as well as questioning it, confortable with sparking dance moves as well as pushing instruments and their sound to their ultimate limits.
La Tène’s music doesn’t alter itself, it is always at the conjuncture between obsessive repetition and fragmented traditional music, hence developing a mineral depth on an obstinate pulse. Where one hears an instrument, its mirror unburdens until the confusion. One lies breathless, only whishing the end becomes an eternal resumption."
10,00€
Out of stock
CD
FOSSIL AEROSOL MINING PROJECT
“The Recounting Of Night Time”
"For over three decades now, the Fossil Aerosol Mining Project has patiently sifted through the damaged remains and bygone refuse from the late 20th century pop culture of America. Mining the snippets of audio found from abandoned drive-in theaters, mangled VHS tapes, and discarded cassettes, Fossil Aerosol studiously pieces together empathic, haunted abstractions of their original source material. their cryptic sound collages address the continued ramifications of the inherent paranoia from the cold war dissonance of stark morality and nuclear apocalypse.
The Recounting of Night Time begins and ends with the scratchy melodies from a well-worn violin. echoes and their amplifications from this instrument gradually subsume the original amidst cascades of tape manipulations and time-delay techniques. This motif repeats through the album with profound emotional torpor through fossil aerosol's hypnotic cycles of foggy ambience and back-masked rhythmic events that intertwine with varispeed-pitched dilations of melancholy melody. It makes for a beautifully corroded smear of sound, recalling the works of William Basinski and Fossil Aerosol's occasional collaborators :zoviet*france:
Fossil Aerosol addresses the album this way:
The Recounting of Night Time was composed and mixed in October of 2014. The source material focuses principally on a certain piece of German gothic cinema made during the late 1970s. This material was culled from both VHS audio tracks, as well a “field recording” made at a poorly-attended screening of the film in a decaying theater in St. Louis, Missouri sometime during the mid-1980s. Evidence of video control track glitches are present, while the scent of the acutely mildewed theater is recollected and implied.
A special edition of the CD, limited to only 50 copies, will also be available via Helen Scarsdale, and also from Afterdays Media. This edition consists of shrink-wrapped CDs overpainted in chalkboard resurfacing paint, erased chalk, acrylic, and a hand-lettered Bandcamp download code for an additional 18+ minute track."
14,50€
Out of stock
CD
Minami SAEKI / Wakana IKEDA / Yoko IKEDA / Taku SUGIMOTO / Stefan THUT / Manfred WERDER
“Sextet”
While touring Europe in autumn 2017, Minami Saeki (voice), Wakana Ikeda (flute), Yoko Ikeda (viola), and Taku Sugimoto (guitar) visited Switzerland and joined up with Swiss composer/musicians Stefan Thut and Manfred Werder. This CD is a recording of five pieces they performed at the concert venue Theater Delly in Solothurn, Switzerland, on October 9, 2017. Thut played cello, and Werder used glockenspiel and typewriter. Each of the five musicians other than Saeki provided a composition of his or her own, and the five pieces were performed by all six. While Sugimoto's composition is just a minute and a half long, each of the Ikedas' respective compositions is 14 minutes, and those by Thut and Werder are over 20 minutes each. All the compositions call for effectively controlled, minimalistic playing. Maintaining a high level of concentration, the six musicians gave sensitively synchronized, truly superb ensemble performances.
11,90€
Out of stock
CD
Zhu WENBO / Zhao CONG / Takashi MASABUSHI / Masahide TOKUNAGA / Yuma TAKESHITA / Yuji ISHIHARA / Hiroyuki URA
“Trio and Septet”
This is the 3rd CD release commemorating the 6th anniversary of Ftarri, the CD shop in Suidobashi, Tokyo. It documents a concert held at Ftarri in June 2018, featuring Beijing-based musicians Zhu Wenbo and Zhao Cong. The first set was an improvised performance by Zhao Cong (electronics, objects), guitarist Takashi Masabuchi, and alto sax player Masahide Tokunaga (25 minutes). In the second set, a septet consisting of these three musicians plus Zhu Wenbo (buzzer, clarinet, whistle), Yuma Takeshita (remodeled bass guitar), Yuji Ishihara (drums, percussion), and Hiroyuki Ura (percussion) perform Zhu Wenbo's composition "Noise Music" (17 minutes). Both are carefully controlled, finely detailed, superb performances.
Original price was: 11,00€.5,00€Current price is: 5,00€.
Out of stock
CD
Christian FENNESZ & Jim O’ROURKE
“It’s Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry”
Recorded in Kobe, Kyoto, Tokyo, September 2015. Photos by Jim O’Rourke. Layout by Shunichiro Okada. Despite decades of activity and having crossed paths in various collaborations Editions Mego is honoured to release the first ever duo recording from two of the most highly regarded citizens of planet experimental electronic. Individually, Jim O’Rourke and Christian Fennesz have been responsible for numerous legendary works which merge the traditional avant-garde with contemporary sensibilities. On It’s Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry these giants of experimental electronic practice come together for an immensely powerful sonic experience.
The signature of both O’Rourke and Fennesz cohabit this new release with O’Rourke’s gurgling harmonies swimming amongst the shimmering frequencies and strummed melodies produced by Fennesz. Two side long tracks situate themselves as a warm electronic adventure. Simultaneously radical and comforting these works shift from gentle sonorities to fully distorted explosions all of which reside within a template of tension between musical and non-music matter. Timeless in execution and presentation It’s Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry is a deeply rewarding sonic experience from two of the most romantic gentlemen active in experimental music today.
The signature of both O’Rourke and Fennesz cohabit this new release with O’Rourke’s gurgling harmonies swimming amongst the shimmering frequencies and strummed melodies produced by Fennesz. Two side long tracks situate themselves as a warm electronic adventure. Simultaneously radical and comforting these works shift from gentle sonorities to fully distorted explosions all of which reside within a template of tension between musical and non-music matter. Timeless in execution and presentation It’s Hard For Me To Say I’m Sorry is a deeply rewarding sonic experience from two of the most romantic gentlemen active in experimental music today.
Original price was: 12,50€.8,00€Current price is: 8,00€.
Out of stock
3 CD
Charlie MORROW
“Toot!”
“CD 1: Central Park 1850; Breath Chant; Windsong; Very Slow Gabrieli; Marilyn Monroe Collage; Late Afternoon Chant. CD 2: Central Park 2007; Chorale Bounce 1; Chorale Bounce 2; Wave Music for 30 Harps; Wave Music for 40 Cellos; Toot ’n’ Blink Chicago; A Future Harvest. CD 3: Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves; Feather. Charlie Morrow (b 1942) is a sound artist, composer, sound poet, eventmaker. Charlie Morrow is a conceptualist whose music and sound work explores many styles and forms, from events for media and public spaces to commercial soundtracks, new media productions, museum installations and programming for broadcast and festivals. Assembling expert project groups, Morrow employs a collaborative style that fuses arts, artists, and environment. Charlie Morrow, for an artist who has been making music for over 50 years, has been vastly underrepresented on recordings. This 3 CD retrospective set attempts to rectify that situation to some degree. The 15 works on these discs span the years from 1957-2007 and include : Morrow’s first major work, Very Slow Gabrieli, a super slow motion performance of G. Gabrieli’s Sonata Pian e Forte for double brass ensemble; Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves, a beautiful polychromatic, almost tactile collage where chattering sparrows and mellifluous songbirds join the measured undulations of devotional voices. Brass rings out over cradles of bells, doves coo, gulls mew and the wash of the tide ushers in the late Medieval intricacies of dulcimer, recorder and viol. You can experience the sound made by herds of instruments through the two instances of Wave Music included in this set. As well as environmental works, chanting pieces, audio collages, and so much more.” label info
Original price was: 22,00€.12,00€Current price is: 12,00€.
In stock
CD
Lucio CAPECE
“Factors of space inconstancy”
“Factors of Space Inconstancy” For soprano saxophone, two wireless speakers as pendulums in oscillation, cassette walkman, volume pedal.
Two wireless speakers are moving as pendulums in oscillation. They amplify a cassette walkman in recording function. The cassette recorder works in this way only as a microphone, producing a delicate feedback that I modify or play together with by producing similar tones with the soprano saxophone. I modify the cassette walkman´s response using a volume pedal, considering that changing the volume with the walkman volume controller changes the material characteristics of the feedback in an unwanted way. The wireless speakers receive the information with a few seconds delay, what creates an artificial reverberation.
According to the place where I situate the cassette walkman, and myself (playing the saxophone), this delay and the interaction with the feedback changes, in a subtle way, the idea of the shape of the room. The difference with the real resonance of the room becomes evident each time I stop the walkman´s function, using the volume pedal.
Note: The walkman´s cassette motor and tape produces a hiss, what gives an almost permanent subtle background white noise to this recording. Only absent when I stop the walkman function, via the volume pedal. I have played versions using the walkman without a cassette, reducing this hiss. But I have largely preferred the recording version including it.
“Eyes don’t see simultaneously” For analog synthesizers and equalizers in feedback.
This piece works with sound regarding the way we can perceive it as foreground or background. It´s structured as a come-and-go between ears and body listening.
300 copies.
Original price was: 14,00€.8,00€Current price is: 8,00€.
Out of stock
CD
David ROSENBOOM – Anthony BRAXTON
“Two lines”
“David Rosenboom, MIDI Grand Piano, HFG (Hierarchical Form Generator), Responding Sampled Piano; Anthony Braxton, Sopranino, Soprano and Alto Saxophones, Clarinet and Flute. Two legendary composer-performers join forces on this recording to unite composition with improvisation, "new music" with "new jazz." Starting from Rosenboom’s notated score for Two Lines and his musical computer program, these musicians have achieved, to paraphrase Rosenboom, a composition that is immediately heard. Duets with interactive HMSL software. Includes Rosenboom’s Two Lines, plus compositions in collaboration with Braxton: Lineage, Enactment, Transfiguration and Transference.”
Original price was: 14,00€.9,00€Current price is: 9,00€.
Out of stock
CD
Robin HAYWARD
“Stop time”
Robin Hayward plays microtonal tuba in Catherine Christer Hennix’s ensemble and Stop Time is his first composition to be released on Important Records.
Stop Time was commissioned for a festival of the same name taking place in Leuven in 2013. It is the first piece to use a subset of the three-dimensional physical version of the Hayward Tuning Vine, invented in 2012, as a musical score. The harmonic space implied within the four cubes contained within the subset, based on prime numbers two (octave, colour-coded grey), three (perfect fifth, colour-coded blue) and five (major third, colour-coded red), is explored by the acoustic instruments and projected via the surround-sound system onto the physical space of the performance area. In tonight’s performance, the colour-coding is made explicit through spotlighting each musician according to the colour of the pitch they are currently playing. In the middle of the piece, when the central black ball is sounded, the lighting therefore momentarily disappears. The idea is not so much to simulate synesthesia as to explore possible interactions between sound, vision, space and time. Harmonic space is projected over time onto physical space, thus “stopping time”.
The recording and photos are from a performance taking place at De Bijloke, Ghent, in September 2014.
Bertel Schollaert, Baritone Saxophone. Pieter Matthynssens, Cello. Wannes Gonissen, Electronics. Robin Hayward, Tuba.
Original price was: 15,00€.8,00€Current price is: 8,00€.
Out of stock
3 CD
ELEH
“Retreat. Return. Repose”
Only 10 copies available and it’s already sold out ! This deluxe 3 CD set presents Eleh’s Retreat, Return & Repose together for the first time. The LPs were originally only available via Important Records mailorder. Retreat is a collection of exploratory sound assemblages put together during a cabin sojourn. New timbral richness, tonal expansion and deep synthesis make these pieces rather different from previous work. Return reflects on time away. Repose contains only one piece, the final recording of Circle Two: Coastal Rotation For Dune Loop which was debuted at 2010’s Mutek festival in Montreal. This piece completes the Retreat/Return trilogy with Repose and is intended to stand very much on its own. Rain on your hood. Your heart beats. A beach break roaring in the distance. Isolated pines are played by the wind. A fine spot for repose. You turn around and head home.
Original price was: 36,00€.18,00€Current price is: 18,00€.
Out of stock
CD
Jean-François LAPORTE
“Soundmatters”
“Soundmatters is the first major compendium of the recordings from French-Canadian sound artist Jean-Francois Laporte, including his highly acclaimed composition Mantra. In balancing formal precision and intuitive expressionism, Soundmatters results in a series of visceral compositions that build upon the traditions of minimalism, graphical composition, and phonography. Laporte reveals his colossal talents for experiential composition through deftly processed recordings of tumultuous windstorms that would make Chris Watson proud, spiralling drones that he’s polished to a Haflerian sheen, the majestic bellowing of sustained horns in the empty cargo hull of a decommissioned ship, and of course the metallic growl of his immaculate Mantra. Given the numerous parallels to Xenakis’ smoldering electroacoustics and Tony Conrad’s delirious harmonics, Laporte’s work demands the attention as an under recognized genius in the realm of avant-garde composition.” “Électro-Prana” (1998). “Boule qui roule…” (1997). “Dans le ventre du dragon” (1997). “Mantra” (1997). “Plénitude du vide” (2005).
Original price was: 15,00€.8,00€Current price is: 8,00€.
Out of stock
CD
CINDYTALK
“The Labyrinth Of The Straight Line”
Written and recorded by Cindytalk between 2013–2015 at Roi Vert, Okamoto, Japan and Thirteenth Floor, London, UK. Film clips on Sea Of Lost Hopes, Lost Unfound and Filthy Sun: Ghost Dance (UK 1983), directed by Ken McMullen. Design/images: David Coppenhall
‘The Labyrinth of the Straight Line’ is a compilation of chimerical poetry. Ambiguous haikus of agony, melancholy, obscurity and dissensus are unfolding over time. Walking on the shapeshifting paths of transgression, on the search for new realities since the early 1980’s, Cindytalk’s latest release pays homage to their industrial roots, comprising brutalist outbursts in abstract sceneries of beauty and abysmality. As surreal and introspective as a film by Jean Cocteau, as labyrinthic and enigmatic as a story of Borges, Cindytalk succeeds in spatializing subjectivity. These introverted detournements follow the logic of dreams and form the unsettling soundtrack of an unresting mind. The outcome can be abrasive and balearic at times, but also delicate and melancholic. 'The Labyrinth Of The Straight Line' forms an alphabet of dark and obscure detachment. Acid shivers of a body without organs and convulsive pumps of arteries alternate with poignant murmurs of the past that dissolve in tender shades of hushed despair and graceful debris.
We find ourselves in spaces with walls crumbling down or concaved by glazed mirrors terrorizing the claustrophobic body. From time to time we can hear a disembodied voice, speaking soft and clear like a narrator from a different reality.
Sonic psychogeography between somnambul dark ambient, claustrophobic post-industrial and nightmarish techno. Delightful sketches of escatology.
‘The Labyrinth of the Straight Line’ is a compilation of chimerical poetry. Ambiguous haikus of agony, melancholy, obscurity and dissensus are unfolding over time. Walking on the shapeshifting paths of transgression, on the search for new realities since the early 1980’s, Cindytalk’s latest release pays homage to their industrial roots, comprising brutalist outbursts in abstract sceneries of beauty and abysmality. As surreal and introspective as a film by Jean Cocteau, as labyrinthic and enigmatic as a story of Borges, Cindytalk succeeds in spatializing subjectivity. These introverted detournements follow the logic of dreams and form the unsettling soundtrack of an unresting mind. The outcome can be abrasive and balearic at times, but also delicate and melancholic. 'The Labyrinth Of The Straight Line' forms an alphabet of dark and obscure detachment. Acid shivers of a body without organs and convulsive pumps of arteries alternate with poignant murmurs of the past that dissolve in tender shades of hushed despair and graceful debris.
We find ourselves in spaces with walls crumbling down or concaved by glazed mirrors terrorizing the claustrophobic body. From time to time we can hear a disembodied voice, speaking soft and clear like a narrator from a different reality.
Sonic psychogeography between somnambul dark ambient, claustrophobic post-industrial and nightmarish techno. Delightful sketches of escatology.
Original price was: 12,50€.6,00€Current price is: 6,00€.
Out of stock
2 CD
Russell HASWELL & PAIN JERK
“Electroacoustic Sludge Dither Transformation Smear Grind Decomposition nO!se File Exchange Mega Edit”
Electroacoustic Sludge Dither Transformation Smear Grind Decomposition nO!se File Exchange Mega Edit' is the long awaited collaboration from two of the world finest purveyors of noise, electroacoustics and top shelf audio mayhem. Having met at the legendary Tokyo venue 20000 volts in 1997 Haswell and Pain Jerk (Kohei Gomi) stayed in touch with the intent to collaborate at some point in the future. This was eventually realized in 2012 when they were offered a gig to play together at the Rammel Club in Nottingham. Prior to the show they exchanged files of solo recordings, as a means of forming a basis for what was initially conceived as an 'extreme duet tag mass attack'. It was here that the foundation was laid for the epic extreme end result we now encounter. The Nottingham performance was recorded and both parties took away the results in addition to their solo recordings to re-edit and re-send, back and forth, for 2 years, re-editing, re-contextualising these original sounds. The results of this extended collaboration is a punk academic collision which utilises advanced computer music techniques and analogue/digital modular synthesizer splurge, along with the more basic and belligerent frequencies found in distortion and feedback. This can also be read as a study of editing in all forms; hyper editing, editing in pop music, editing in dance culture, electro-acoustic editing, the editing techniques used in musique concrète, editing used in film and advertising along with the notion of gaps - the audible and inaudible. A blistering 2cd collision of transformation, technique, ideas and form which resides equally in the advanced fields of electroacoustic study and the high energy freeform noise from which both practitioners sprung.
Original price was: 17,00€.8,00€Current price is: 8,00€.
Out of stock
CD
“A” TRIO + Alan BISHOP
“Burj Al Imam”
Entirely recorded at Tunefork Studios on the outskirts of Beirut, Burj al Imam’s five tracks include three largely improvised numbers, a loose reworking of early Sun City Girls track “The Imam” and a cover of traditional Americana song “Gently Johnny”. The album displays remarkable coherence, for four musicians coming from such different backgrounds. True to their habits, the Lebanese trio of trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, guitarist Sharif Sehnaoui, and bassist Raed Yassin create acoustic improvised drones that range from insistent, chiming resonances with emergency alarm bells to low, thrumming hums. The three musicians largely avoid conventional technique, instead using what sounds like motorized devices to generate rattling, metallic vibrations, building a mechanistic backdrop out of which the instruments’ true voices occasionally arise. Perched above the ambient din, Alan Bishop is in fine form, and alternates between gentle crooning and malevolent whispering. Alan Bishop: guitar and voice; Mazen Kerbaj: trumpet; Sharif Sehnaoui: acoustic guitar; Raed Yassin: double bass.
Original price was: 13,00€.7,00€Current price is: 7,00€.
Out of stock
2 CD
Kasper T. TOEPLITZ & ZEITKRATZER
“Agitation / Stagnation”
CD1. Zeitkratzer plays "Agitation | Stagnation" by Kasper T. Toeplitz. With Isabelle Duthoit, clarinet Hild Sofie Tafjord, French horn, Hilary Jeffery, trombone, Reinhold Friedl, piano, Burkhard Beins, percussion, Lisa Landgraf, violin, Burkhard Schlothauer, violin, Nora Krahl, violoncello, Ulrich Phillipp, double bass, Martin Wurmnest, sound. Kasper T. Toeplitz: conductor & electronics.
Recorded by Martin Wurmnest at Festival Sacrum Profanum, October 4th 2016, Kraków.
CD2. Kasper T. Toeplitz, "Agitation | Stagnation", electronic composition.
Disc 1 contains Zeitkratzer's instrumental interpretation of Toeplitz's electronic score from Disc 2.
Though these works are intended to be heard separately, the two discs can also be played simultaneously.
13,50€
In stock
CD
Ingar ZACH & SPEAK PERCUSSION
“Before Nightfall One”
SOFA is proud to present this new collaboration with the labels own Ingar Zach together with the critically acclaimed contemporary ensemble Speak Percussion from Melbourne, Australia. Eugene Ughetti and Matthias Schack-Arnott in Speak Percussion invited Ingar Zach for the first concert in their series named Before Nightfall. The idea behind this concert series is to experience and document the result of one single day of collaboration, culminating in a concert in a carefully chosen space in Melbourne.
Before Nightfall One is an extraordinary example of what can happen during a days work with three open minded musicians finding a common ground to create unique music. In the perfect surroundings at the Substation in Melbourne, Zach, Ughetti and Schack-Arnott have crafted a highly intriguing soundworld which we at SOFA are happy to share with our listeners. Don’t miss out on this one!
11,00€
Out of stock
CD
Håvard VOLDEN
“Space Happy”
In the first episode of the new Twin Peaks series, a man - a security guard or janitor kind of guy - is staring intensely into a human sized glass compartment. There is nothing Inside it but the image of his own reflection, but the intensity of the scene and the man’s gaze is high, as if a monster could appear inside the compartment at any time. We get the feeling this box is a portal to another dimension.
Space Happy sounds like this kind of mysterious box or portal. Several pieces are built around field recordings or sounds of electricity, the type of sounds that exist in empty rooms or scenes in movies before anything happens. Elsewhere, sounds of different electrical instruments are assembled, stacked, cut and pasted, looped or layered with fast tape echoes, sounding otherworldly, yet familiar and lo-fi.
The record is reminiscent of an archival collage of the past fifty years of electronic music, run through a tape machine in space, but at the same time it is the very personal and very intimate work of a single composer and their own sounds. Sounds that never build into the shapes you would think, but keep evolving on their own entrancing path.
Perhaps this is why Space Happy sounds so contemporary, yet difficult to place in the landscape of contemporary music or composition. It sounds more like a work of film or visual art, in which the images are replaced by sounds, and any sense of narrative is replaced by intense, beautiful mystery.
Håvard Volden (b.1980, Trondheim) is a Norwegian experimental guitar player, based in Oslo since 2006. He is known for his collaboration with Jenny Hval since 2008, and his instrumental noiserockjazz band Moon Relay. He have also several other active projects, such as the Swedish/Norwegian electro-acoustic trio Muddersten (released on SOFA) and a duo with the Italian percussionist Carlo Costa. Space Happy is Håvard Volden’s second solo album, and we are extremely satisfied with releasing this music on SOFA.
Original price was: 11,00€.6,00€Current price is: 6,00€.
In stock
CD
STREIFENJUNKO
“Like Driving”
Streifenjunko has taken a shift towards electronic sounds. Their previous albums "No Longer Burning" (SOFA 2009) and "Sval Torv" (SOFA 2012) was remarkable in the magnificent sound achieved only with a saxophone and trumpet. With the seemingly endless possibilities of electronic instruments their strategy of finding simple tasks has been put to the test, and in the making of this album Streifenjunko was put back to the starting position to re-discover their focus and recognisable simplicity. The result is music with sharp edges and sudden changes, crude starting and stopping. The engine of the music is the interlocking of slow moving streams. Some of the electronics are self generating for Espen and Eivind to follow, and the different sounds and layers are multiplexed using starting and stopping signals. To play is simply to follow the signals, like driving.
Streifenjunko has been making music together since 2005, and during these years, the members Espen Reinertsen (saxophone) and Eivind Lønning (trumpet) have worked closely together to present truly unique and original compositions on more than 200 concerts all over the world.
It is presented with a beautiful artwork by video artist Kjell Bjørgeengen.
11,00€
In stock
2 CD
Hermann NITSCH
“Musik der 135. Aktion, Kuba”
Recorded in 2012, Musik der 135.Aktion Kuba captures the controversial performance from Herman Nitsch's Orgien Mysterien Theater (Orgies Mysteries Theatre) as part of the Havana Biennial art exhibition. For more than fifty years Nitsch has been an influential and striking figure of Austrian art - In his Orgien Mysterien Theater he uses actors, blood, animal bodies and entrails, fruits, symbolic crucifixion, music, processions and ritualistic gestures to enact a new form of Gesamtkunstwerk: pagan ceremonies that aim to a kind of collective catharsis. "Dionysos gegen den Gekreuzigten" (Dinoysus against Christ Crucified") was performed by 150 musicians and 30 actors, including the University's Symphony Orchestra ISA and the artist himself, celebrating Afro-Cuban rituals and ceremonies.
18,00€
Out of stock
CD
CHICAGO EDGE ENSEMBLE
“Insidious Anthem”
Dan Phillips: Guitar. Mars Williams: Saxophones and Percussion. Jeb Bishop: Trombone. Krzysztof Pabian: Double Bass. Hamid Drake: Drums.
Chicago Edge Ensemble is a special quintet of finest musicians dealing in avant-garde jazz and improvisation, put together by Dan Phillips. Insidious Anthem is their second album, and first on Trost Records.
Original price was: 15,00€.10,00€Current price is: 10,00€.
Out of stock
CD
BRÖTZMANN / LEIGH
“Sparrow Nights”
Peter Brötzmann, b-flat/bass/contra-alto clarinet, alto/tenor/bass saxophone. Heather Leigh, pedal steel guitar.
There is complexity in simplicity, and Sparrow Nights is Peter Brötzmann and Heather Leigh's most enduring record to date, and their first studio album. A series of emotionally rich and boldly elucidated tonal and timbral exchanges played like compositions on pedal steel and reeds, the tracks (released as a 6 track LP and 10 track CD) are cold-forged minimalist blues motifs dragged from instrumental laments.
After three years playing together Brötzmann/Leigh's connection and understanding is by now both cerebral and deeply invested in the physical and sensory possibilities of their combined sound, while retaining a melancholic distance. Within this duo there is fluidity – neither is the anchor – and these recordings sound with as much variety as the sea. At times Sparrow Nights carries the clarity and poeticism of still water and open horizon ("This Word Love"), and at others it contains the elemental and ferocious roar of white water breakers on black rocks ("This Time Around").
On their previous three live albums (Ears Are Filled With Wonder, Sex Tape, Crowmoon) the duo have developed an intimate and intense language that manifests here as a focus on power and control, where figures blasted of unnecessary decoration are drawn from the shadows and smoke of collapse. The studio setting also allows Brötzmann to bring a broader range of reeds than in live scenarios: where previously he has played primarily tenor, clarinet and tarogato with Leigh, here he delivers the heat of alto and the low pressure of bass saxophone and clarinet.
Brötzmann's duo with Leigh continues to trace a fresh new arc in his trajectory, and this release also falls at a time when Leigh releases Throne, her most song-based record to date. Here as a studio duo they play a new-old blues for times of complexity, noise and chaos, continuing to redefine and re-sound possibilities for improvised music.
Recording and mastering by Martin Siewert. Artwork by Peter Brötzmann.
15,00€
In stock
CD
KTT / VOMIR
“Espace”
2 tracks recorded during live collaboration and one track recorded live in Kasper's Studio.
Textured noise, interferences, merged electronics
Mixed by Kasper Toeplitz
Released by a 4-way label collaboration
Decimation Sociale / Zora records / 4iB records / Narcolepsia
300 copies in gatefold card sleeve.
Collaborative work between Vomir, French master of harsh noise wall music, and the composed noise for laptop and bass guitar by Kasper T. Toeplitz.
"It is all in all quite a fine collaboration, heavy as a mountain of course, and not something for early morning digest, yet with some caution and limited dosage this a most enjoyable mighty noise release." (Frans de Waard / Vital Weekly)
11,00€
Out of stock
CD
MUDDERSTEN
“Karpatklokke”
Henrik Olsson, objects, friction, piezo. Martin Taxt, microtonal tuba, electronics. Håvard Volden, guitar, tape-loop.
Muddersten is a type of mudrock whose original constituents were clays. It looks like hardened mud and, depending upon the circumstances under which it was formed, it may show cracks or fissures, like a sun-baked clay deposit. Fertile clay and fat soil, compressed, dried out and turned into stone. Still delicate flowers will find their way through its cracks and fissures, prosper in its barren ground.
It´s all about hydraulic; the phenomena that liquid is almost impossible to compress. Plants soak up water by their roots and pump it into their expanding cells. The cells are built up mainly on cellulose which won't break under pressure, nor will the water they contain. Once the pressure from below is too strong the surface will break.
The names of the improvisations on this record are perhaps not all that important; skyggesildre, kjempeløk, stjerneskjerm, blodstorkenebb, strid kråkefot, høstfloks, sibiriris. In the end nothing is really all that well defined anyhow and the circumstances remains unclear. Clay, rock, water, flower, cellulose and photosynthesis. The hardened, the flowing, the persistent and the growing.
Nevertheless, the relentless striving and the drought stillness seems constantly present simultaneously in these sessions. Motion and friction, like wild flowers pushing their way through an unforgiving mudrock.
Water fighting dehydration.
Original price was: 12,00€.6,00€Current price is: 6,00€.
In stock
CD
PERLONEX
“Perlonoid”
Ignaz Schick (turntable, objects, sine waves, live-electronics, feedback). Jörg Maria Zeger (electric guitars, live-electronics, feedback). Burkhard Beins (drums, percussion, objects, zither).
Recorded live at Sophiensäle Berlin during Echtzeitmusiktage, Berlin 2010. All music played as heard, without overdubs. Recorded by Kassian Troyer & Ignaz Schick. Mixed by Jörg Maria Zeger. Mastered by Werner Dafeldecker.
This recording has been waiting in the archives for its release since it was performed and recorded during the month-long Echtzeitmusiktage in Berlin. It sums up the whole decade of Perlonex’ previous music making, but at the same time marks a turning point for the group. Due to external individual obligations and other personal reasons Perlonex took a longer concert break after this event up until 2013. In 2014 the group started rehearsing and playing live again, performing a series of concerts in Berlin and Sweden. The music of Perlonex became more colorful and musique concrete-like, not at least due to Ignaz Schick’s return to vinyl manipulation. The concert you can hear on Perlonoid was one of the last concerts of the band where he uses his object-based rotating surfaces set-up. Perlonoid is rather monochrome, drony, and slow-paced. It is stunning how the music repeatedly gravitates towards its ever-emerging tonal centers. The intensity builds up sheer endlessly and finally explodes at its peaks. An exceptionally powerful sound system, the nice conditions of a large good sounding space and an enthusiastic Berlin festival audience stimulated the trio to build a piece which is both detailed and intense at the same time. Perlonex clearly pushes their long-established maximal-minimalistic material to its formal and physical limits.
Perlonoid makes the 7th release of the band Perlonex and will be followed in 2017 by more archive recordings - including recordings with guest performer Mike Cooper - as well as releases of new material. Also in 2017 the group will intensify its concert activity. - But until then, lean back and enjoy the wonderful soundscapes of Perlonoid!
Perlonex was formed in late 1998 and has eversince performed, recorded and toured extensively through numerous countries. Over the years Perlonex have created a unique blend of different styles – settling somewhere in the no man’s land between electro-acoustic improv, industrial noise, ambient, minimal and often even incorporate elements of psychedelic music. On their extensive tours they have performed in an extreme range of different settings: from academic contemporary music festivals via improv and electronica venues to rough underground and punk/noise clubs. They are frequently invited to prominent festivals all over Europe and have performed concerts in Australia, Canada, Malaysia, New Zealand, Russia & the USA. In Autumn 2004 Perlonex invited two guests, Keith Rowe & Charlemagne Palestine, to join the trio for each one set at the Berlin Podewil. The event was labeled perlonex.tenions and the entire concert was released as a 2CD on the Ukrainian imprint Nexsound. Especially the meeting with Charlemagne Palestine turned into a very special and magic event & became both an amazing musical and personal exchange. Since then every once in a while Perlonex teams up with Palestine and he has become a frequent guest to the group. Another 2CD “It Aint Necessarily So” is documenting a Vienna concertand had been released in 2009 on Zarek. Even though Perlonex normally don’t perform with guests they have made a few more exceptions, besides Charlemagne Palestine & Keith Rowe they also teamed up with R Keenan Lawler and the fabulous lapsteel guitarist Mike Cooper. In plus they collaborated with visual/video artists Ulrike Flaig (video feedback) on several occassions.
Original price was: 13,00€.6,00€Current price is: 6,00€.
Out of stock
2 CD
Philip CORNER
“Satie Slowly”
American composer Philip Corner likes Satie too well not to object to how he is played. From the time of his participation in the first performance of Satie’s “Vexations” he realized that here was, lurking under the travesties of the 1st Gymnopédie, one of the greats of this or any other century... a “secret genius” who masked with humility and seeming conformity a profoundly innovative thorough-going critique of the limitations and pretensions of our High Culture as it has come down to us. A 44 page booklet of commentary and and additional 16 page booklet of graphic analyses set out to demonstrate this - with implication for performance of the works. As the record title “Satie Slowly” shows, the indication “lent” is taken at its full value. An ample selection of piano pieces, spread across two CDs, come from his early period, music with great spiritual content.
Original price was: 21,00€.12,00€Current price is: 12,00€.
Out of stock
CD
COMPILATION
SUR LES RAILS
A compilation made under the collectif Transports en commun. Artists working with disabled or autistic people in the field of experimentral and improvised musics. With Atelier Mediterrannée, Creahm, Wild Classical Music Ensemble, Les Harry’s, Adam Shelton, Phil Minton, Amplified Elephants, DNA, AND?, Électrogène.
Original price was: 12,00€.6,00€Current price is: 6,00€.
Out of stock
2 CD
Ryoko AKAMA
“Places and pages”
A 2 CD with realisations of short text scores, actualised by Ryoko Akama, Cristián Alvear, d’incise, Cyril Bondi, Stefan Thut and Christian Müller.
“I had been inspired by short text works like ‘Water Yam’ by George Brecht, ‘grapefruits’ by Yoko Ono, and some other pieces by Alison Knowles or James Tenney. I am also interested in the haiku and the poetry tradition of Japan as well.
The threshold between the defined and undefined in minimalistic word and sound composition fascinates me. I enjoy witnessing the process whereby a score transforms into a different medium, especially when the instructions are open-ended.
I did a series of scores called tada no score between 2013-14 in which I wrote short scores in hidden places in busy towns or in a natural landscape. These weren’t explicitly made for performance purposes, but were more like marking my musical thoughts in relation to passing time. The next year, 2015, I was invited to Chile to play a concert with Cristian Alvear. I had an idea to compile a notebook with many short texts, this time deliberately intended for performance. I gradually accumulated a number of short scores that would relate to ‘place’, ‘space’, ‘time’ or ‘location’, and assembled them into pages of the notebook.” (R. Akama)
“I had been inspired by short text works like ‘Water Yam’ by George Brecht, ‘grapefruits’ by Yoko Ono, and some other pieces by Alison Knowles or James Tenney. I am also interested in the haiku and the poetry tradition of Japan as well.
The threshold between the defined and undefined in minimalistic word and sound composition fascinates me. I enjoy witnessing the process whereby a score transforms into a different medium, especially when the instructions are open-ended.
I did a series of scores called tada no score between 2013-14 in which I wrote short scores in hidden places in busy towns or in a natural landscape. These weren’t explicitly made for performance purposes, but were more like marking my musical thoughts in relation to passing time. The next year, 2015, I was invited to Chile to play a concert with Cristian Alvear. I had an idea to compile a notebook with many short texts, this time deliberately intended for performance. I gradually accumulated a number of short scores that would relate to ‘place’, ‘space’, ‘time’ or ‘location’, and assembled them into pages of the notebook.” (R. Akama)
Original price was: 23,00€.12,00€Current price is: 12,00€.
In stock
CD
COMPILATION
EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC CONCERT 2
Atsushi Yonemoto: unamplified electric guitar. Hirohiko Yamada: unamplified electric guitar, synthesizer, conductor. Hisayo Kobayashi: bottled water, conductor. Mamoru Nakajo: metronome, co-conductor. Masayuki Takano: triangle, conductor, direction, co-conductor. Toshihisa Hirano: synthesizer, electric guitar.
Guests : Hikaru Yamada: alto saxophone, water measurement. Ikuhiro Yamagata: voice, triangle, water measurement. Yoko Ikeda: viola, triangle. Tetuzi Akiyama: unamplified electric guitar, triangle, electric guitar. Taku Sugimoto: bowed guitar, tuning, electric guitar. Wakana Ikeda: flute.
Recorded by Taku Sugimoto at l-e, Tokyo, December 4, 2016.
Includes an insert with scores and liner notes by Wakana Ikeda, Yoko Ikeda, and Masayuki Takano in Japanese and English (English translation by Atsushi Yonemoto).
Original price was: 12,00€.6,00€Current price is: 6,00€.
In stock
CD
COMPILATION
EXPERIMENTAL MUSIC CONCERT
“All the composers appearing on this CD are the participants in my experimental music school, the series of which washeld ibn the summer of 2013. It is essentially impossible to teach any kind of art; you can only learn voluntary how to do it. I myself had never intended to become a teacher. Nevertheless, I conceived an idea that it would be useful to do a kind of school.” Taku Sugimoto.
With pieces from Atsushi Yonemoto, Hisayo Kobayashi, Masayuki Takano, Hirohiko Yamada, Mamoru Nakajyo, Rei Sasaki, Toshihisa Hirano.
Original price was: 12,00€.6,00€Current price is: 6,00€.
Out of stock
CD
Max E. KELLER
“Vier politische Kompositionen für Tonband”
Edition of 500 copies. 20 page illustrated booklet with liner-notes in German and English. Four political tape compositions 1976-1979 by Swiss composer Max E. Keller (b.1947). A rare case of left-wing / socialist electroacoustic music. The CD includes Keller’s piece from the long out-of-print and sort of legendary Split-LP with Martin Schwarzenlander from 1977 plus 3 previously unreleased tape compositions. Max E. Keller originally started out as one of the first Swiss Free-Jazz musicians in the mid 1960’s and studied composition with Hans Ulrich Lehmann and Helmut Lachenmann, and electronic music with Nicolaus A. Huber und Dirk Reith. In 1972 he was expelled from the Darmstadt International Summer Courses for New Music because of his political stances. Since the early 1970’s Keller wrote more than 150 pieces for various forces which are performed internationally. Since 2007 he is chairman of the Swiss Society for Contemporary Music. Tracklist: “Sicher sein” (1976, for voice and tape, 24’06 min). “Grundgesetze” (1977, for four voices and tape, 13’32 min). “Sie” (1978, for voice and tape, 15’08 min). “Hymnen” (1979, for two voices and tape, 14’26 min).
Original price was: 14,00€.7,00€Current price is: 7,00€.
Out of stock
2 CD
J.B. SMITH
“No More Good Time in the World for Me”
CD Digipak with 36 page booklet featuring liner notes by Nathan Salsburg.
Folklorist Bruce Jackson was among the last to record work songs. In 1964 he visited Ramsey State Farm in Rosharon, Texas, where he met Johnnie B. Smith, prisoner
130196. A native of Hearne, Texas, Smitty was 46 years old and on his fourth prison term. In his younger days, Smitty toted lead hoe in a flat-weeding gang and led the work songs. It’s hard to overstate the importance of a good song leader in the penitentiary setting—one needed to be rhythmically, lyrically, and physically reliable, to maintain those songs over interminable hours of hard labor under an unforgiving south-central Texas sun.
But J.B. also sang other songs, different songs—those he’d made up to occupy himself while chopping sugarcane or picking cotton. He referred to them as his “little ol’ songs.” The longest stretched to thirty-three verses, or more than twenty-two recorded minutes. Although Smitty knew and sang a variety of melodies, to an assortment of work songs and sacred pieces, he employed only one tune for his compositions. What changed were the tempo and the ornamentation with which he individualized them. “The Major Special,” “No More Good Time In The World For Me,” “Ever Since I Been A Man Full Grown”—each song Smith charged with its own emotional ambience, as a seasoned preacher intuits the particular colors and atmospheres that should imbue each portion of his service.
Smith was paroled in 1967, a year after his final session with Jackson and the release, on John Fahey’s Takoma Records, of an LP - Ever Since I Have Been A Man Full Grown —of three of Smitty’s songs. That summer, Bruce arranged for him to sing at the Newport Folk Festival, at which he appeared on stage with Pete Seeger, and, in one of the only photos that survive of him, in the company of Robert Pete Williams and Muddy Waters. A couple of years passed before Bruce heard from him again. He had returned to Amarillo, where he preached for a while; a parole violation then sent him back to prison.
Original price was: 12,00€.7,00€Current price is: 7,00€.