In stock
CD
Gavin BRYARS
“The Sinking of the Titanic”
Gavin Bryars was born in Yorkshire, England in 1943. His first musical forays were as a jazz bassist working in the early 1960s with improvisors Derek Bailey and Tony Oxley. Bryars later worked with composers John Cage and Cornelius Cardew, founded the Portsmouth Sinfonia and collaborated with Brian Eno on his famed Obscure imprint.
"The Sinking of the Titanic", Bryars' first major composition, was inspired by the tragic event of the British passenger liner's cross-Atlantic maiden voyage. Bryars eloquently reconstructs the passengers' experience – at once forlorn and eerily calming – through assemblages of understated strings and indeterminate elements. A core principle of the piece is that the ship's band continued to play as the vessel went down. One of the most sublime works in the modern classical canon, Titanic remains Bryars' magnum opus.
"Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet", the album's second sidelong track, is based on a tape loop of a London street singer captured in the early 1970s. Featuring Derek Bailey, Michael Nyman and John White, Bryars' composition gradually builds around the cripplingly poignant voice until its emotional force is almost too much to bare. It's no surprise that Jesus' Blood is known as Tom Waits' all-time favorite piece of music.
Produced by Brian Eno in 1975 as the inaugural release on Obscure, "The Sinking of the Titanic" draws the listener in to a majestic world. While these exquisite, hymn-like recordings have not changed in nearly 50 years, their deeply personal nature and the audience's attention to their subtlety have only strengthened over time.
20,50€
In stock
2 CD
Michèle BOKANOWSKI
“Musique de courts métrages, Music of Patrick Bokanowski’s short films”
*2023 repress*
This double CD edition collects, for the first time, all the original music composed by Michele Bokanowski for the short films of her husband, Patrick Bokanowski.
Covering a time spectrum of almost 50 years, from "La Femme Qui Se Poudre" dated 1972 to "Vers Syracuse" of 2019.
Michele Bokanowski's sounds are visionary, sometimes disturbing and grotesque, sometimes ecstatic.
Some compositions are suites of grim musique concrete, an obscure ambient perhaps like never heard before, others are liquid abstractions of "expanded" music where it is easy to lose the ordinary awareness of one's senses, and find oneself experimenting with new ways of approaching listening as in the best tradition of experimental music .
The work of Michele Bokanowski and Patrick Bokanowski is essential for all avant-garde and visionary art lovers.
La Femme Qui Se Poudre (1972) 15:28
Déjeuner Du Matin (1974) 12:03
La Plage (1991) 12:12
Au Bord Du Lac (1993) 05:11
Flammes (1998) 03:35
Le Canard à L’orange (2002) 07:37
Battements Solaires (2008) 17:43
L’envol (2016) 07:26
L’indomptable (2017) 03:48
Vers Syracuse (2019) 05:40
18,00€
In stock
CD
Eliane RADIGUE
“Hepta I – Occam XX”
In Eliane Radigue's work, one distinguishes or contrasts the electronic works (composed until the early 2000s) with those written for acoustic instruments. From 2002 onwards, the artist began a series of compositions, the Occams, in which, in her own words, she fully realised what she had always sought to achieve in her electronic works.
The disc devoted to her here brings together two pieces written at the same time; one for an instrumental ensemble (Dedalus) and the other for analogue synthesizer (Ryoko Akama). If the means seem to be opposed, this concordance of time lets us glimpse the deep unity that brings them together.
12,00€
Out of stock
3 CD box
Angus MACLISE
“Tapes”
Angus MacLise, the first drummer for the Velvet Underground, was a poet, composer, and a member of The Theatre of Eternal Music alongside La Monte Young.
The "Tapes" 3CD Box is the first-ever reissue of a 3-cassette compilation that Pleasure Editions originally released in 2015, limited to only 100 copies. The 3CD box set comes with a miniature poster and track lists, and each CD has a paper sleeve that reproduces the original cassette card artwork. This comprehensive 3CD box set is over three hours in length and includes session recordings with Tony Conrad and William Breeze (of Coil, Current 93, and Psychic TV), mystical recordings from the filming of Ira Cohen's "The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" (1968), shortwave experiments, and sounds of Tibetan Buddhist monks recorded by MacLise.
The "Tapes" compilation features excerpts from the archives of the Angus MacLise Papers, which are held at Columbia University Library. The archives contain over 100 hours of reel-to-reel tape recordings of live improvised music, theatrical performances, and sound experiments created by MacLise and his associates during the 1960s and 1970s. MacLise produced the original recordings in his own unique style, characterized by rough and peculiar editing.
The release is curated and sequenced by Will Cameron and Mark Iosifescu.
Jim O'Rourke completed a new sound restoration and mastering of the recordings in 2023.
The 3CD box comes with a miniature poster, a sheet of track list, and each CD comes with a paper sleeve which reproduces the original cassette sleeve artwork.
40,00€
Out of stock
CD
Ralf WEHOWSKY – Richard FRANCIS
“R”
On a trip from Auckland over Worpswede to Eggenstein Richard Francis visited Ralf Wehowsky on the weekend of September 28th and 29th, 2013. For the recording sessions taking place during these two days Richard used his analogue synth and electronics, while Ralf had a desktop and a laptop for producing digital electronic sounds at hand. For bridging the anatgonistic sound worlds the input of one sound system was fed with the output of the other and vice versa. For this release two of the tracks (Piece 1, Untitled 1) are presented as they were recorded, with only slight pan and volume adjustments. The third track (Piece 3) is composed of fragments of a longer improvisation, time-shifting the contributions of the two artists against each other to constitute a system of non-simultaneity.
RLW/Ralf Wehowsky
Ralf Wehowsky is a german experimental composer, active since the 80s (with the group p16.d4 then). his work is split between solo releases (under the moniker rlw) and collaborations, exploring all fields between media exchange and realtime presence recordings. collaboration partners include among others Lionel Marchetti, Merzbow, Jim O´Rourke, Bruce Russell, Das Synthetische Mischgewebe, Anla Courtis, Contrastate, Kohei Matsunaga, Annette Krebs - and Richard Francis.
Richard Francis
Richard Francis is a sound artist from New Zealand working with electronics and found recordings. He's released solo and collaborative albums on Senufo Editions, Entr’acte, Glistening Examples, Korm Plastics and Aufabwegen. Recent collaborators include Ralf Wehowsky, Frans De Waard, Anla Courtis, Bruce Russell, Mattin, Jason Kahn and Francisco Lopez.
14,00€
In stock
CD
Thanos CHRYSAKIS
“Manifold Vista”
Manifold Vista is the new album by composer/producer Thanos Chrysakis. Rarely can something so meticulously assembled together sound so fluid. A distinct, disciplined sense for composition emerges from each of these works, displaying formal integrity while at the same time, they are also effervescent, forceful, fiercely idiosyncratic and beautifully shaped and transformed. The album discloses an expanded and detailed vista of sound’s interiority forming a strangely pleasurable, not to mention engaging, experience.
12,00€
In stock
CD
Terry FOX
“Labyrinth of the inner ear”
About Terry Fox: Labyrinth of the inner ear
For the exhibition “Sonambiente", I will produce a new audio work for compact disc. The title of this work will be “Labyrinth of the inner ear" and it will be recorded in Berlin on the 14th and 15th of April, 2006. The compact disc will be produced directly after the recording process and presented, during Sonambiente, in a room of the former Polish Embassy.
This will be a kind of “drone" work consisting of the repetitive tapping of a sightless person (the artist, Siegfried Saerberg) navigating his way through an urban environment and finally returning to the place where the walk began. The sound of the cane, either tapping or sweeping back and forth, would be a constant in this composition. It would cease only when Siegfried stops walking for some reason, for
example: an interesting acoustical space, a ride in a public transport, etc.
Location interpretations could be ascertained by the sounds surrounding the steady central position of the cane; an alley, a busy shopping district, the relative quietness of a back street a park, and so forth. This walk would, itself, finally return to its place of origin.
Terry Fox, Köln 2006
About Terry Fox
Terry Fox (b. 1943 Seattle – d. 2008 Cologne) was one of the leading pioneers of American Body Art and Conceptual art. He became famous in the Seventies with performances in which he used his own body as a medium for exploring often extreme physical and psychological experiences. In numerous installations, actions and street events he directed a heightened attention to everyday phenomena and aspects of social interactions. Fox researched both unknown and little regarded aspects of energy in substances, and the transformative qualities of materials. And from the 1980s on, language, as both substance and meaning, would play an increasingly important role in his space related works and objects.
With his lifelong, innovative exploration of sound and space, Terry Fox is also one of the seminal figures in contemporary Sound Art. He became known worldwide in the 1970s for performances with meters-long piano wires stretched in rooms, often fastened from one wall to an opposite wall. With his understanding of sound as a sculptural material, he has created an impressive body of work located between Visual art and Acoustic Sound art. In his later years quiet sounds at the limit of audibility and silence became more and more prominent.
The ephemeral, the invisible, time, space, the body, words, letters, sound -throughout his entire work Terry Fox used the elemental forms of human existence to explore the possibilities of sculpture and extend its limits..
Fold out embossed DVD sleeve with liner notes and photographs documenting the piece
15,00€
In stock
CD
Dirk SERRIES + Asmus TIETCHENS
“Die Höfner Akten”
“Die Höfner Akten”
Dirk Serries and I have long been colleagues and friends. Since the 1990ies we have exchanged sound materials to be reworked and published on an on and off basis. "Die Höfner Akten" are something new and special to in so far as the source material with its basic structure has been improvised exclusively on an acoustic guitar (of the 'Höfner' brand). Dirk and I had agreed upon the following: I would rework the provided sound material in such a way that the character of his improvisations would remain intact while at the same same time expanding the sound palette through further manipulations. In doing so we hoped the results would sound equally like Serries or Tietchens, or - even better - like none of us. We on our part are happy with the results. It is upon the listener of the "Die Höfner Akten" to decide whether we succeeded in our endeavours.
Asmus Tietchens
14,00€
Out of stock
CD
REYNOLS
“Fire Music Reloaded”
Fire Music was composed by Reynols in 2002 with fire recordings made at Tigre (Río Capitán) and different locations in Buenos Aires city and around. With some of this material, a CD EP appeared in Japan in 2002 through the Digital Narcis label, however the complete version of this piece remained unreleased for decades. In a recent research the masters of the whole work were found and rescued from the group's archives. So twenty years later, finally the full version of this piece is now ready to see the light on a brand new CD album carefully released by German label Aufabwegen. Fire Music Reloaded stands on the most conceptual side of Reynols' catalogue, along with works such as: 10.000 Chickens Symphony, Whistling Kettle Quartet, Computer Music, Gordura Vegetal Hidrogenada or Blank Tapes. In its four parts journey, the group explores a wide range of frequencies coming from fire as the only sound source. A release which pays tribute to the igneous aurality. Let your ears get on fire!
14,00€
Out of stock
4 CD box
Michèle BOKANOWSKI
“Musiques de concert”
This 4 CD box edition collects all concert musics by Michèle Bokanowski, a composer of electroacoustic music living in Paris, France.
Passionate about music from childhood, it wasn’t until later, at the age of 22, after reading À la recherche d’une musique concrète by Pierre Schaeffer, that she decided to study composition. After classical training in harmony, she met Michel Puig, a pupil of René Leibowitz, who taught her writing and analysis upon Schönberg Theory. In 1970, she began a two-year internship at the Research Department of the ORTF under the direction of Pierre Schaeffer. Between 1973 and 1975, she took part in a research group on sound synthesis, studied computer music at the University of Vincennes as well as electronic music with Éliane Radigue. She mainly composes for concert and for cinema (music for Patrick Bokanowski’s short films and for his feature films L’Ange and Un Rêve solaire). She has also composed for television, theatre and dance.
In her music, often infused with a mysterious atmosphere, she uses evocative and poetic concrete sounds, with a mastery of looping and feedback techniques and with an art of cinematic editing.
“Why musique concrète is so attractive to me, as opposed to written music… To write music implies that an idea or a thought is at the origins of the composition and that the final thing is the sound rendering of this thought. The sound is at the end of the line, in other words. Musique concrète is the exact reverse of this process: you start from sounds… sounds that will perhaps lead you to a constructive thought. Here, it’s the material that induces the thought, or the writing. The possibilities of finding or inventing new sounds and, therefore, new forms are tremendous, infinite… Moreover you can use chance to a much greater extent.”
(Excerpt of an interview with Michael Karman for Asymmetry Music Magazine 2007)
CD1 :
Pour un pianiste (1974)
Trois chambres d’inquiétude (1976)
Tabou (1984)
CD2 :
Phone variations (1988)
Cirque (1994)
CD3 :
L’étoile absinthe (2000)
Chant d’ombre (2004)
Enfance (2011)
CD4 :
Rhapsodia (2018)
Cadence (2019)*
Elsewhere (2020)*
* unreleased
Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi.
35,00€
Out of stock
CD
La Monte YOUNG – Marian ZAZEELA
“31 VII 69 10:26 – 10:49 PM”
La Monte Young was born in Bern, Idaho in 1935. He began his music studies in Los Angeles and later Berkeley, California before relocating to New York City in 1960, where he became a primary influence on Minimalism, the Fluxus movement and performance art through his legendary compositions of extended time durations and the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems. With wife and collaborator, artist Marian Zazeela, they would formulate the composite sound environments of the Dream House, which continues to this day.
Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela's first full-length album is often referred to as "The Black Record" due to Zazeela's stunning cover design, complete with the composer's liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script.
Side one was recorded in 1969 (on the date and time indicated by the title) at the gallery of Heiner Friedrich in Munich, where Young and Zazeela premiered their Dream House sound and light installation. Featuring Young and Zazeela's voices against a sine wave drone, the recording is a section of the longer composition Map of 49's Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young's group The Theatre of Eternal Music). According to Young, the raga-like melodic phrases of his voice were heavily influenced by his future teacher, the Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath.
Side two, recorded in Young and Zazeela's NYC studio in 1964, is a section of the longer composition Studies in the Bowed Disc. This composition is an extended, highly abstract noise piece for bowed gong (gifted by sculptor Robert Morris). The liner notes explain that the live performance can be heard at 33 and 1/3 RPM, but may also be played at any slower speed down to 8 and 1/3 RPM for turntables with this capacity.
“La Monte Young is the daddy of us all.” — Brian Eno
21,00€
In stock
CD
David CUNNINGHAM
“Grey Scale”
David Cunningham was born in Ireland in 1954. His work ranges from pop music to gallery installations including several collaborations with visual artists. His first significant commercial success came with The Flying Lizards' single "Money," an international hit in 1979.
Originally released in 1976, Cunningham's first solo album Grey Scale has become a landmark statement of DIY minimalist composition – continuing in the vein of the wild explosion of arthouse experimentation from the early '70s. Cunningham, then a student at the Maidstone College of Art in Kent, drafted fellow student non-musicians and (using whatever instruments available) crafted an endlessly shifting sonic palette with an improvisor's keen sensitivity to space, texture and tone.
As Cunningham states in the liner notes, his approach was to "pursue something (which may appear trivial or meaningless) so rigorously or relentlessly to the point that it reveals something new."
Cunningham was influenced by live performances he was attending at the time by English composers Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman as well as free improvisors Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, David Toop and Paul Burwell.
The inaugural release on Cunningham's own Piano label, Grey Scale was indeed "something new" in 1976. The artist quickly integrated his experimental sensibilities to produce art-rock pioneers This Heat, whose debut appeared on Piano in 1979. His popular success performing as The Flying Lizards (with two electro-punk albums on Virgin during the New Wave era) was presaged by this seminal work of fascinating sound collage and tonal freedom. First-time reissue.
19,00€
In stock
2 CD
Eliane RADIGUE
“11 Dec 1980”
11 Dec 80 is a two CD set containing Eliane Radigue's live performance of Chry-Ptus (1971), her first work for modular synthesizer, and the world premier of parts one and three of Triptych (1978). Triptych part 2 is also performed. Upon hearing these performances for the first time in many years Radigue declared them to be the best versions she'd ever heard.
Radigue's sublime renderings of these major pieces are full of illusory stasis, slow change and dense, slow motion drone that has characterized her pioneering electronic work. These pieces move like a river with currents shifting beneath the surface. While you can't quite distinguish the individual components you get a clear feeling of motion and change.
23,00€
Out of stock
3 CD
COPPICE
“Draw Agreement”
A spatiotemporal synthesis of Coppice's auditory and musical experiments (2009-2022) with custom, prepared, and modified musical instruments.
This 3CD set abridges Coppice's first three studies, artificially inserts them into the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, WI, and binaurally captures their diffusion across Elastic's CLEAT (Chicago Laboratory for Electroacoustic Theatre), a 16-channel 96-speaker sound system.
21,00€
In stock
2 CD
Sylvain CHAUVEAU – Pierre-Yves MACÉ
“L’Effet Rebond”
L'effet Rebond is not one album but two. Two parallel albums sharing the same title. One by Pierre-Yves Macé, the other by Sylvain Chauveau -- two friends and regular collaborators for nearly twenty years. Both works come from the same original material: a few tracks of guitar, piano, harmonium, and vocals, initially recorded by Chauveau. The lyrics (in French, English, Japanese) are very short poems by or quotations from e.e. cummings, Thelonious Monk, John Cage, Basho, cult tennis player John McEnroe, Carla Demierre, Aram Saroyan, Joseph Guglielmi, and painter Philip Guston. From this common material, each of the two composers has built his own edifice, choosing the elements he keeps, the ones he abandons, adding little by little his own instruments, structures and ideas. In the end, two distinct and autonomous opuses are born. Double-CD; digipack inside a slipcase.
"Version Iridium": Pierre-Yves Macé has allowed himself to be guided by his long-standing obsessions: hybridization of genres and formats, balance between lyricism and formalism, intersection of chamber instrumental writing and chiseled electronics. But this time he pushes his penchant for sobriety further than ever. Whether it is a song-haiku, a miniature for piano or a long repetitive and rhythmic piece, the simplicity is at the service of the clarity of the ideas and the beauty of the timbres -- Maitane Sebastiàn's cello or Cédric Jullion's bass flute in mind.
"Version Silicium": Sylvain Chauveau has surrounded himself with his friends Peter Broderick (backing vocals), Machinefabriek (electronic processing), Lucille Calmel (field recordings), Romke Kleefstra (electric guitar), and Rainier Lericolais (electronic sounds) in order to develop more than ever his love of repetition and the ultra-short format. Here, the pieces often last only the time of a breath, of a few heartbeats. A musical form rarely explored in any musical genre, but one that Chauveau has been fond of since his early days and whose quintessence he seeks here.
16,50€
In stock
CD
Valerio TRICOLI
“Say Goodbye To The Wind”
First emerging during the early years of the new millennium, over the last two decades, the Palermo born, Munich based composer, Valerio Tricoli, has forged a singular path within experimental sound practice, continuously rethinking the relationship between electroacoustic composition and narrative possibility. Say Goodbye to the Wind, his first record with Shelter Press, stands among his most poetic and groundbreaking efforts to date. Across three intricate, deeply personal works of concrète music - dense with themes drawn from J.G. Ballard, Samuel Beckett, theosophy, and the temporal blur of DMT - the composer blurs the boundaries between the tangible and abstract, weaving complex allegories for the self.
Exploring auditory phenomena and the narrative potential of electronic and acoustic sound sources, Valerio Tricoli’s work - as it has appeared across a carefully executed body of solo recordings, as well as noteworthy collaborations with Stefano Pilia, Dean Roberts, Thomas Ankersmit, Hanno Leichtmann, and numerous others - rests at the shadowy juncture of internal and external worlds; a meeting place where the synthetic and organic give way to utterances of the existential, psychological, physical, and occult. Most commonly created on a Revox B77 reel-to-reel - manipulating, live sampling, and real-time editing / mixing of field and studio recordings - in Tricoli’s hands, estranged moments of sonorous ephemera transmogrify and intertwine as metaphorical and allegorical sums, far greater than their parts.
Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s sixth full-length, gathers three works of musique concrete, thematically bound by notions of absence, loss, stillness, and release. The album’s title is taken from a story by J.G. Ballard, set in the desolation of a holiday resort that rests among a landscape of endless rolling dunes that are populated by ʻsound sculptures’ and monsters. The otherworldliness of this reference is further expanded by the depth exposed by the many possible implications and meanings implied by the combination of words; wind being a metaphor of the breath of life, and its absence meaning death. If the wind is a storm, what is the abstraction that remains in the absent void when it leaves?
Historically, one of the primary pursuits of musique concrete is the transformation of everyday sonority - field recordings, found / incidental sound, etc. - into abstractions of profound meaning and weight. While this process unquestionable played a heavy hand in the composition of Say Goodbye to the Wind, Tricoli’s approach to the idiom sets the stage for something entirely unique. Not only are the practices of tape music applied to field recordings, but to the sounds of piano, synthesizers, objects, and the composer’s voice, in addition to interventions by Ecka Mordecai on cello, Lucio Capece on soprano saxophone, and Ida Toninato on vocals. Further expanding to potential of meaning, are the references - literal and abstract - that guided each work into being.
A masterstroke of contemporary musique concrète and auditory conceptualism, dense with metaphor, allegory and meaning, Shelter Press is thrilled to present Valerio Tricoli’s ‘Say Goodbye to the Wind’. Issued in a limited edition CD and Digital, mastered by Rashad Becker, with artwork by Mårten Lange.
14,00€
10 CD
Luc FERRARI
“L’œuvre électronique”
2023 repress
The decision to assemble a boxed set titled Luc Ferrari, l’œuvre électronique [Luc Ferrari, Electronic Works], defining the word electronic in the widest sense possible, meant bringing together an essential part of the composer’s work: tape music without any classical instruments.
From Étude aux accidents (1958) to Arythmiques (2003), the 31 works in this compilation will help the listener to discover all the facets of his art based on “captured” sounds. He tried and tested all the different techniques of studio work: brilliantly elaborated electroacoustic works, radiophonic story-telling or Hörspiele, which he particularly relished, or other semi-improvised works.
This editorial choice is not a way of drawing a hierarchy between on the one hand so-called mixed music (with instruments), which he excelled at, and on the other hand the type of music published here, which only includes recorded sounds. On the contrary, what we aimed to do was to show the strong links he drew between natural sounds and the way he scored them. On this subject, Pierre Schaeffer often talked of the necessary balance between sounds and musicality. The power of recorded sounds alone (voices, landscapes, strange sounds, everyday scenes, etc.) without formal mastery is not enough to hold the listener's attention for long.
From that point of view, each work of Ferrari’s is a discrete lesson in music. Ferrari was always very lucid when he claimed that a composer was a little like a “journalist” who, through his compositions, witnessed the state of the world while at the same time creating a work of art.
This is another aspect of this edition: as we listen and in filigree, half a century unfolds before us. A committed artist bears witness to technological progress, political awareness, reports and crucial encounters. More than an essential compilation, this boxed set reflects the personality of a diverse, inventive and extraordinarily musical man.
Daniel Teruggi / David Jisse, 2008
CD1: “Étude aux accidents”, “Étude aux sons tendus”, “Étude floue”, “Échantillon pour mimes”, “Visage V”, “Tête et queue du dragon”, “Tautologos I”, “Tautologos II”, “Music Promenade”.
CD 2: “Hétérozygote”, “J’ai été coupé”, “Petite symphonie intuitive pour un paysage de printemps”.
CD 3: “Presque rien n°1 ou le lever du jour au bord de la mer”, “Presque rien n°2 ou Ainsi continue la nuit dans ma tête multiple”, “Presque rien avec filles”, “Presque rien n°4 La remontée du village”.
CD 4: “Danses organiques”.
CD 5: “Ouvert-Fermé”, “Unheimlich Schön”, “Dérivatif”.
CD 6: “Dialogue ordinaire avec la machine ou trois fables pour bande doucement philosophiques”, “Strathoven”, “Capricorne”, “Chute libre”.
CD7: “Far-West News 1 : De Santa Fé à Monument Valley”, “Far-West News 2 : De Page à Grand Canyon”.
CD 8: “Far-West News 3: De Prescott à Los Angeles”, “Archives génétiquement modifiées”.
CD 9: “Les Anecdotiques”.
CD 10: “L’escalier des aveugles”, “Les Arythmiques”.
60,00€
In stock
CD
Michael RANTA
“Azabu”
Even though only being fully terminated 50 years after its conception, ‘Azabu’ can be regarded as the starting point of Michael Ranta’s creative self-discovery. The recordings that form the base of ‘Azabu’ were mostly made in the Tokyo district with the same name (Azabu-Juban). Next to abstracted field recordings ‘Azabu’ is also pervaded by a rich variety of percussion, string and wind instruments, all played by Ranta himself. Subsequently Ranta edited, layered and processed the recordings at the NHK electronic music studio in Tokyo. Both pieces display a vast array of acoustic, electronic and concrete sound events meticulously sequenced to a complex fusion symbolizing the entire spectrum of earthly and heavenly sounds. Dynamic extremes evoke a restless flight through space, or through the depths of human subconsciousness, between dream and reality. Ultimately the music disappears, like a dot in the sky gradually fading into nothingness – an “ascension” that closes the loop in a ritual of life that can begin anew again at any time.
Michael Ranta: composition, performance, mixing (1971)
14,50€
CD
P16.D4
“Distruct”
Distruct
Directed by P16.D4
Assemblage of transformed, organized and (re)structed sound material submitted by:
Bladder Flask, Déficit Des Années Antérieures, De Fabriek, The Haters, Philip Johnson, Hiroki Kocha, Merzbow, Fredrik Nilsen, Nocturnal Emissions, Nurse With Wound, Onnyk, Harold Schellinx, Die Tödliche Doris, Vortex Campaign.
"On this, their second LP, P16.D4 solicited tapes from several artists from Europe, England, the U.S., Canada, and Japan, and mixed that with their own material. Though in the current digital age collaborations from artists thousands of miles apart is quite normal, this was a quite radical approach back in 1982, when work on this LP began – an interesting concept that actually works quite well, since these artists, which include Bladder Flask, DDAA, the Haters, Merzbow, Nocturnal Emissions, Nurse With Wound, and several others – work in a similar free-ranging experimentalism as P16.D4, and their particular elements, usually just vocals or one instrument or noise implement, blend well without diluting P16.D4’s own peculiar brand of avant-garde post-industrialism, but merely give it another facet. One of the best tracks, “Aufmarsch, Heimlich,” consists of a choir submitted anonymously from Eastern Europe phasing in and out of static while a skronky alto sax bleats away. Most of the pieces exist somewhere just beyond the borders of free jazz, industrial, and even classical avant-garde, full of jarring noises and strange transitions and with a heavy overlay of electronics. What started out as an experiment yielded one of P16.D4’s best albums."
Rolf Semprebon / AMG
"Distruct is organized around sounds provided by the cream of experimental musicians of the early '80s, from Nurse With Wound to Nocturnal Emissions, via De Fabriek, Die Todliche Doris, The Haters, Merzbow, and others. Obviously, there is no question of remixing here, and at no time do P16.D4 seek to hide its sources, clearly identifying the contribution of each artist in the liner notes. It would be futile to try to find the paw of each artist, the trio operating vis-à-vis its collaborators the same methods as in their own work. Reworked, distorted by various effects, cut, edited, aggregated with other sounds, produced by P16.D4 themselves, reprocessed. Exchange, communication, two other data that will constantly recur in the work of P16.D4, rich in external contributions and encounters of all kinds. Musically, and despite the diversity of sources treated, Distruct escapes the heterogeneous character, which often marks this type of collaboration, to offer a coherent whole: fragments of opera, Soviet speeches, out-of-tune guitar, saxophone, tattered violins, overdriven and metallic noisy attacks, jackhammers, field recordings, battered choirs, and many other less identifiable sounds. In addition to the desired dialogue between the artists, Distruct also offers a real reflection on listening, and on the expectations of the listener."
Dissolve
P16.D4 was a German electronic noise music collective, active primarily from 1980 to 1988. P16.D4 embraced tape cut-ups, musique concrète, endless recycling and transformation of previously published material, and many long-distance collaborations with like-minded artists such as DDAA, Vortex Campaign, Nurse With Wound, and Merzbow. Their active participation in the international industrial tape scene yielded collaborative output such as their release Distruct, where bands such as Nurse with Wound, Nocturnal Emissions, Die Tödliche Doris, and The Haters provided the source material. The longest-term collaboration was with the installation and conceptual artist Achim Wollscheid, who used P16.D4 sounds as the basis for LPs he recorded under the name SBOTHI. Ralf Wehowsky, the only constant member of the group, later released solo material under the alias RLW. Members of P16.D4 were also involved with Selektion, a collective of people involved with sound as well as the visual arts. Selektion published LPs, CDs, books, visual art and design. The collective worked in a strongly improvised, spontaneous and anti-professional way, using acoustic and electronic instruments, using existing sound fragments, duplicating and alienating them, using repetition, distortion, changes in speed and playing direction. For this they used not only sounds of other artists but also their own material from earlier productions. Late works of the collective are associated with musique concrete.
P16.D4 was a German electronic noise music collective, active primarily from 1980 to 1988. P16.D4 embraced tape cut-ups, musique concrète, endless recycling and transformation of previously published material, and many long-distance collaborations with like-minded artists such as DDAA, Vortex Campaign, Nurse With Wound, and Merzbow. Their active participation in the international industrial tape scene yielded collaborative output such as their release Distruct, where bands such as Nurse with Wound, Nocturnal Emissions, Die Tödliche Doris, and The Haters provided the source material. The longest-term collaboration was with the installation and conceptual artist Achim Wollscheid, who used P16.D4 sounds as the basis for LPs he recorded under the name SBOTHI. Ralf Wehowsky, the only constant member of the group, later released solo material under the alias RLW. Members of P16.D4 were also involved with Selektion, a collective of people involved with sound as well as the visual arts. Selektion published LPs, CDs, books, visual art and design. The collective worked in a strongly improvised, spontaneous and anti-professional way, using acoustic and electronic instruments, using existing sound fragments, duplicating and alienating them, using repetition, distortion, changes in speed and playing direction. For this they used not only sounds of other artists but also their own material from earlier productions. Late works of the collective are associated with musique concrete.
12,00€
CD
P16.D4
“Kühe in 1/2 trauer”
"Though this German group started out as a the new wave band P.D., by the time of Kuhe in 1/2 Trauer, their first LP under the P16.D4 name from 1984, they had developed far beyond into extremely experimental music similar to other post-industrial artists working with abstract avant-garde soundscapes. There's a bleak industrial feel to the gritty, lo-fi electronics and tape loops, while the group throws in enough curve balls to keep it interesting. On some pieces, strange, looped choirs bubble out of throbbing pulses and drones of feedback, while others have clanging and clattering, and elements of musique concrète and improvisation blur the boundaries even further. The opening track, "Default Value," is one of those disorienting pieces with noises flying everywhere, while "Paris Morgue" takes excerpts from one of their old P.D. tracks and messes it up with additional instruments, while the ungainly titled fourth track throws in a heavy texture of percussive noises to create an edgy ambience about to teeter off the edge, and the even darker and more ambient title track takes the tension even further. Arrhythmic and amorphous and capable at moments of becoming quite noisy and abrasive, while at others far more somber and quiet, Kuhe in 1/2 Trauer is quite a fascinating release."
Rolf Semprebon / AMG
P16.D4 was a German electronic noise music collective, active primarily from 1980 to 1988. P16.D4 embraced tape cut-ups, musique concrète, endless recycling and transformation of previously published material, and many long-distance collaborations with like-minded artists such as DDAA, Vortex Campaign, Nurse With Wound, and Merzbow. Their active participation in the international industrial tape scene yielded collaborative output such as their release Distruct, where bands such as Nurse with Wound, Nocturnal Emissions, Die Tödliche Doris, and The Haters provided the source material. The longest-term collaboration was with the installation and conceptual artist Achim Wollscheid, who used P16.D4 sounds as the basis for LPs he recorded under the name SBOTHI. Ralf Wehowsky, the only constant member of the group, later released solo material under the alias RLW. Members of P16.D4 were also involved with Selektion, a collective of people involved with sound as well as the visual arts. Selektion published LPs, CDs, books, visual art and design. The collective worked in a strongly improvised, spontaneous and anti-professional way, using acoustic and electronic instruments, using existing sound fragments, duplicating and alienating them, using repetition, distortion, changes in speed and playing direction. For this they used not only sounds of other artists but also their own material from earlier productions. Late works of the collective are associated with musique concrete.
P16.D4 was a German electronic noise music collective, active primarily from 1980 to 1988. P16.D4 embraced tape cut-ups, musique concrète, endless recycling and transformation of previously published material, and many long-distance collaborations with like-minded artists such as DDAA, Vortex Campaign, Nurse With Wound, and Merzbow. Their active participation in the international industrial tape scene yielded collaborative output such as their release Distruct, where bands such as Nurse with Wound, Nocturnal Emissions, Die Tödliche Doris, and The Haters provided the source material. The longest-term collaboration was with the installation and conceptual artist Achim Wollscheid, who used P16.D4 sounds as the basis for LPs he recorded under the name SBOTHI. Ralf Wehowsky, the only constant member of the group, later released solo material under the alias RLW. Members of P16.D4 were also involved with Selektion, a collective of people involved with sound as well as the visual arts. Selektion published LPs, CDs, books, visual art and design. The collective worked in a strongly improvised, spontaneous and anti-professional way, using acoustic and electronic instruments, using existing sound fragments, duplicating and alienating them, using repetition, distortion, changes in speed and playing direction. For this they used not only sounds of other artists but also their own material from earlier productions. Late works of the collective are associated with musique concrete.
12,00€
CD
BLADDER FLASK
“One Day I Was So Sad …”
Bladder Flask "One Day I Was So Sad That The Corners Of My Mouth Met & Everybody Thought I Was Whistling"
Bladder Flask's debut (in fact only) LP, originally issued by Orgel Fesper Music in 1981, is one of the most eclectic albums of the post-Industrial era. It is both challenging and perplexing... So, put down your puny instruments of normality and breathe in the frenzied fungal spores of Bladder Flask!
The fact that Steven Stapleton of Nurse With Wound is a big fan of this album is testament to its greatness:
'I love Bladder Flask's One Day I Was So Sad That The Corners Of My Mouth Met & Everybody Thought I Was Whistling and what a great title, perhaps my favourite ever. I must have listened to the album so much in the '80s. I listened to it again recently and it was like welcoming an old friend.'
Personnel: Richard Rupenus, Philip Rupenus + Sean Breadin, John Mylotte, Nigel Jacklin
Recorded at Wrongrong Studio and Spectro Arts Workshop 1980 – 1981
Audio Restoration & Mastering: Colin Potter @ IC Studio
CD tracklisting :
I: It Takes A Bliss
II: Musical Behind Head
Bonus tracks:
III. The Groping Fingers Of This Vulgar Intruder Have Strummed The Toppling Byzantine Organ Of His Mind
IV: I Am As I Have Spoken
V: Zzzeut-Zzt-Zzt-Zzt (Pour Chapeaux, Manteaux Et Parapluies)
A selection of comments & reviews: Very scrap merchant, very Dada... Comparisons could be made to NWW's Merzbild Schwet: a mixture of Musique Concrete and instrumental collages, but more intense and compact than NWW. An extremely interesting album and very cleverly done, especially the editing of complex tape treatments. Neumusik A puzzlingly great album. Ah, the halcyon days of bungled Kurt Weill renditions, overactive splicing hands and tape-loops lasting only a few seconds before being smudged by hyper fast-forwarding, like a random, operatic battle of thermopylae as re-created by members of NWW. Faced with omnipresent latter-day refined-aesthetic cognescenti, whose duty it is to remind one of the gravity of modern music, I find myself defending such gut-level joyous stupidity and its gung-ho determination to vertiginously swirl about all manner of daft sundries, with no regard for the mess that may be left afterwards. This is why I like this stuff and some of the worries of the world can be, if not alleviated, at least disguised in the scent of Bladder Flask's audio compost pot-pourri. Bananafish A masterpiece of unrestrained Dada music, Musique Concrete and Electro-Acoustic Improv. Primitive electronics meet the sounds, or rather shreds thereof, of various acoustic instruments, field recordings, found objects, mysterious devices as well as body slapping, whistles and smacks. An augury of what the radicals of Electro-Acoustic music do nowadays, but here you also get surreal humour that could safely rank alongside the best, wildest works of NWW. Activists One Day I Was So Sad... comprises two side-long tracks of extended Dadaist reverie, a sublime mix of Musique Concrete and instrumental collages. Bladder Flask and their ilk were spiritual forefathers to today's 'clicks and cuts' generation, creating a slapdash Industrial experimental music which exploited the idiosyncrasies of analogue tape assemblage and editing. I love this album to pieces and it gets my highest recommendation. Other Music This packs a helluva lot into its generous playing-time. The side-long 'It Takes A Bliss' ranges from free sounding structures of various instruments (played with relish) to a sometimes unnerving encounter with distorted piano strings, guitars and less identifyable sounds. The chemistry which prevents this from becoming self-indulgent is what makes Bladder Flask tick. They wind through an unsettling amount of images and the recording, mixing and editing must have taken a very long time. Most of the music is very spontaneous with even 'Goon' type voices appearing before being shredded by the next 'act.' It's like a successive queue of cameos all awaiting and clambering for your attention. Side two, 'Musical Behind Head,' has slightly more direction and cohesion (or perhaps I just began to adjust to the music?) I was rather stupefied by the contents of this strange menagerie of experimental dialogue. A unique album. Outlet Mind-boggling Fluxus, Dada, Improv, Sound Art and cut-up queasy lunacy. When the LP was originally issued in 1981 it left all those who heard it (including an awe struck Steven Stapleton) flat on their backs. Its two sides of collage combines spoken word samples, people shouting and going mad, hammered piano keys, strummed, out of tune guitars, honking saxophones, wheezy melodicas, sci-fi bloops, tape splurge, preset keyboard beats, train whistles, rattled cutlery drawers, clockwork toys, clanging steel pipes, records spinning at the wrong speed. A myriad of juxtaposed sounds and atmospheres of utter strangeness and beguiling entropy. A sound world that up until 1981 I doubt barely existed. An intriguing, delightful and, at times, unsettling experience. Idwal Fisher One Day I Was So Sad... is that ne plus ultra of cut-up sound art. It is an extremely strange - at times, quite hilarious - experiment in fast-moving cut-ups. Its sheer incoherence starts from the get-go and doesn't release its hold on your poor cerebellum until you too are dragged down to a state of lunatic frenzy. It's not a record you would play for fun, but its fractured consciousness, incoherence, and sheer Dadaist lunacy are considerable. God alone knows what sources were used to create it: screaming and coughing, all-manner of acoustic instruments are mauled and mutilated; a trumpet blown by a fat whaler, violins scraped by cretinous monkeys. Aiming for maximum disorientation, it challenges you to keep up with its restless and intense flow of ideas and you're challenged to see past the apparent silliness of it all. Sourced presumably from multiple found sounds, tapes, and records, the piece was assembled in a deliberately fragmented fashion, each sample lasting only a few seconds and bearing no connection whatever to the next. One of the striking aspects of this concoction is the odd and ill-fitting mix of vulgar, crass humour with moments of near-pathological darkness. It's like watching a slapstick movie from the 1930s spliced with a low-budget Italian zombie movie – custard pie fights morphing into monstrous flesh-eating, similar to how Dali and Bunuel claimed that they assembled the first Surrealist movie, Un Chien Andalou. You're pulled in both directions at once until you can hear your own sinews snapping. It's not a record you would play for fun, but its fractured consciousness, incoherence, and sheer Dadaist lunacy are considerable. It's as if Bladder Flask were possessed by some fevered desire to surpass the worst excesses of the lunatic fringe end of the United Dairies catalogue. But this LP had the underlying sinister aim of sending all those who heard it mad, through highlighting the complete absurdity and futility of everything. A gibbering masterpiece. The Sound Projector One Day I Was So Sad... comprises, for the most part, a series of short collages which are seemingly disparate and fragmented: humorous vocal exercises, detuned piano, excerpts from Pop music and Free Jazz, electronics, tape-loops, accelerated scrolling of tapes, excerpts from film dialogues, among a thousand other things that are more difficult to identify. The flirtation with Dadaism, in particular the humour, joyful absurdity and disparate elements, is obvious. Virtuosity doesn't seem to be of any concern to the 'musicians' and it seems rather inconceivable that Bladder Flask are themselves the performers of all that can be heard. Although apparently totally random, the structure, if it can be called that, is more complex than it first appears and this is in fact a very meticulous work which must have been extremely laborious considering all the tape-splicing and editing involved. Industrial Musics One Day I Was So Sad... is one of those records which could be described as abstract but it's much more than that with elements of Musique Concrete, Free Jazz and Free Improvisation although it doesn't sit comfortably in any particular genre. It has a total disregard for the constraints of Western music, be it song structure, tunes, harmony, scales, metrics, notations and other rules which are generally followed by musicians who pretentiously pose as experimental. To accurately describe this album would be very difficult, if not impossible. However, if you're looking for comparisons then I'd have to mention other records of an extreme, free-form nature such as The Faust Tapes or, maybe the most fitting of all, Frank Zappa's 'Nasal Retentive Calliope Music' which is one of the first and best examples of 'maniac' tape-manipulation. One Day I Was So Sad... is one of the most genuinely experimental (in the true sense of the word) records ever conceived and will appeal to those who like to push musical boundaries as far as possible. The fact that Steven Stapleton of NWW, who is considered by many to be a genius of experimentation and a living encyclopaedia of all things avant-garde, is a big fan of this album is proof of its greatness. One Day I Was So Sad... is a masterpiece of experimentation and a totally unclassifiable record. Debaser
A selection of comments & reviews: Very scrap merchant, very Dada... Comparisons could be made to NWW's Merzbild Schwet: a mixture of Musique Concrete and instrumental collages, but more intense and compact than NWW. An extremely interesting album and very cleverly done, especially the editing of complex tape treatments. Neumusik A puzzlingly great album. Ah, the halcyon days of bungled Kurt Weill renditions, overactive splicing hands and tape-loops lasting only a few seconds before being smudged by hyper fast-forwarding, like a random, operatic battle of thermopylae as re-created by members of NWW. Faced with omnipresent latter-day refined-aesthetic cognescenti, whose duty it is to remind one of the gravity of modern music, I find myself defending such gut-level joyous stupidity and its gung-ho determination to vertiginously swirl about all manner of daft sundries, with no regard for the mess that may be left afterwards. This is why I like this stuff and some of the worries of the world can be, if not alleviated, at least disguised in the scent of Bladder Flask's audio compost pot-pourri. Bananafish A masterpiece of unrestrained Dada music, Musique Concrete and Electro-Acoustic Improv. Primitive electronics meet the sounds, or rather shreds thereof, of various acoustic instruments, field recordings, found objects, mysterious devices as well as body slapping, whistles and smacks. An augury of what the radicals of Electro-Acoustic music do nowadays, but here you also get surreal humour that could safely rank alongside the best, wildest works of NWW. Activists One Day I Was So Sad... comprises two side-long tracks of extended Dadaist reverie, a sublime mix of Musique Concrete and instrumental collages. Bladder Flask and their ilk were spiritual forefathers to today's 'clicks and cuts' generation, creating a slapdash Industrial experimental music which exploited the idiosyncrasies of analogue tape assemblage and editing. I love this album to pieces and it gets my highest recommendation. Other Music This packs a helluva lot into its generous playing-time. The side-long 'It Takes A Bliss' ranges from free sounding structures of various instruments (played with relish) to a sometimes unnerving encounter with distorted piano strings, guitars and less identifyable sounds. The chemistry which prevents this from becoming self-indulgent is what makes Bladder Flask tick. They wind through an unsettling amount of images and the recording, mixing and editing must have taken a very long time. Most of the music is very spontaneous with even 'Goon' type voices appearing before being shredded by the next 'act.' It's like a successive queue of cameos all awaiting and clambering for your attention. Side two, 'Musical Behind Head,' has slightly more direction and cohesion (or perhaps I just began to adjust to the music?) I was rather stupefied by the contents of this strange menagerie of experimental dialogue. A unique album. Outlet Mind-boggling Fluxus, Dada, Improv, Sound Art and cut-up queasy lunacy. When the LP was originally issued in 1981 it left all those who heard it (including an awe struck Steven Stapleton) flat on their backs. Its two sides of collage combines spoken word samples, people shouting and going mad, hammered piano keys, strummed, out of tune guitars, honking saxophones, wheezy melodicas, sci-fi bloops, tape splurge, preset keyboard beats, train whistles, rattled cutlery drawers, clockwork toys, clanging steel pipes, records spinning at the wrong speed. A myriad of juxtaposed sounds and atmospheres of utter strangeness and beguiling entropy. A sound world that up until 1981 I doubt barely existed. An intriguing, delightful and, at times, unsettling experience. Idwal Fisher One Day I Was So Sad... is that ne plus ultra of cut-up sound art. It is an extremely strange - at times, quite hilarious - experiment in fast-moving cut-ups. Its sheer incoherence starts from the get-go and doesn't release its hold on your poor cerebellum until you too are dragged down to a state of lunatic frenzy. It's not a record you would play for fun, but its fractured consciousness, incoherence, and sheer Dadaist lunacy are considerable. God alone knows what sources were used to create it: screaming and coughing, all-manner of acoustic instruments are mauled and mutilated; a trumpet blown by a fat whaler, violins scraped by cretinous monkeys. Aiming for maximum disorientation, it challenges you to keep up with its restless and intense flow of ideas and you're challenged to see past the apparent silliness of it all. Sourced presumably from multiple found sounds, tapes, and records, the piece was assembled in a deliberately fragmented fashion, each sample lasting only a few seconds and bearing no connection whatever to the next. One of the striking aspects of this concoction is the odd and ill-fitting mix of vulgar, crass humour with moments of near-pathological darkness. It's like watching a slapstick movie from the 1930s spliced with a low-budget Italian zombie movie – custard pie fights morphing into monstrous flesh-eating, similar to how Dali and Bunuel claimed that they assembled the first Surrealist movie, Un Chien Andalou. You're pulled in both directions at once until you can hear your own sinews snapping. It's not a record you would play for fun, but its fractured consciousness, incoherence, and sheer Dadaist lunacy are considerable. It's as if Bladder Flask were possessed by some fevered desire to surpass the worst excesses of the lunatic fringe end of the United Dairies catalogue. But this LP had the underlying sinister aim of sending all those who heard it mad, through highlighting the complete absurdity and futility of everything. A gibbering masterpiece. The Sound Projector One Day I Was So Sad... comprises, for the most part, a series of short collages which are seemingly disparate and fragmented: humorous vocal exercises, detuned piano, excerpts from Pop music and Free Jazz, electronics, tape-loops, accelerated scrolling of tapes, excerpts from film dialogues, among a thousand other things that are more difficult to identify. The flirtation with Dadaism, in particular the humour, joyful absurdity and disparate elements, is obvious. Virtuosity doesn't seem to be of any concern to the 'musicians' and it seems rather inconceivable that Bladder Flask are themselves the performers of all that can be heard. Although apparently totally random, the structure, if it can be called that, is more complex than it first appears and this is in fact a very meticulous work which must have been extremely laborious considering all the tape-splicing and editing involved. Industrial Musics One Day I Was So Sad... is one of those records which could be described as abstract but it's much more than that with elements of Musique Concrete, Free Jazz and Free Improvisation although it doesn't sit comfortably in any particular genre. It has a total disregard for the constraints of Western music, be it song structure, tunes, harmony, scales, metrics, notations and other rules which are generally followed by musicians who pretentiously pose as experimental. To accurately describe this album would be very difficult, if not impossible. However, if you're looking for comparisons then I'd have to mention other records of an extreme, free-form nature such as The Faust Tapes or, maybe the most fitting of all, Frank Zappa's 'Nasal Retentive Calliope Music' which is one of the first and best examples of 'maniac' tape-manipulation. One Day I Was So Sad... is one of the most genuinely experimental (in the true sense of the word) records ever conceived and will appeal to those who like to push musical boundaries as far as possible. The fact that Steven Stapleton of NWW, who is considered by many to be a genius of experimentation and a living encyclopaedia of all things avant-garde, is a big fan of this album is proof of its greatness. One Day I Was So Sad... is a masterpiece of experimentation and a totally unclassifiable record. Debaser
12,00€
Out of stock
CD
Marinos KOUTSOMICHALIS – Kasper T. TOEPLITZ
“w piwnicy”
Electronic music by Marinos Koutsomichalis and Kasper T. Toeplitz; the outcome of their 2016 studio sessions in Paris, FR. W piwnicy / στο υπόγειο has been self-released by the artists in an edition of 300 glass-mastered cds in 2022.
“They do their thing pretty good, but I expected nothing less from these two prolific computer musicians”. (Frans De Waard, Vital Weekly)
8,50€
Out of stock
CD
ZINC & COPPER – Kasper T. TOEPLITZ
“Vents stellaires”
ZINC & COPPER:
Eelena KAKAGLIOU, French Horn
Hilary JEFFERY, Trombone
Robin HAYWARD, Tuba
Kasper T. TOEPLITZ, Live electronics
Vital weekly :
There is a lot of studying here, music, scores and video. The latter is only for the first release. Zinc & Copper is a trio of wind instruments; Elena Kakaliagou on French horn, Hilary Jeffrey on trombone and Robin Hayward on tuba. Toeplitz is the composer of the piece and plays live electronics. On his website, you can find the score for this piece (fifteen pages) and on YouTube (use the title of the work), a different recording from the premiere of the music in Berlin. It was interesting to view the score while playing the CD and seeing the concert clip. I am sure my review would have been much different had I only heard the CD. Even with the knowledge of wind instruments being part of this, I would have to remark something about the noise element of the music. At times it is piercingly loud; in fact, a lot of times. We no longer recognise any of the instruments, even when, according to the score, I perhaps should hear them. When the noise is trimmed/cut/removed, we hear these instruments playing their long-sustaining sounds. In all its loudness and quietness, this is some intense music. From barely audible breathing to filtered white noise, the music seems to be moving from -40db to 0db, but with a lot of distortion. I recognised it from the CD only when I saw the music being performed. Here we have a more extensive section of wind instruments against a wall of distortion. On the CD, this is not always evidently clear. A very heavy work of modern composition and of a force that I seldom hear in this particular musical area. I wonder what real noise heads would make of this, and, of course, those who go to recitals of modern music. For both, it must be a strange affair.
8,50€
Out of stock
CD
Kasper T. TOEPLITZ
“Arche”
Composition & solo bass: Kasper T Toeplitz
Vital weekly:
His other new release is a solo affair, music-wise, as it was commissioned by the dance company Loldanse. The recording on CD was recorded live on November 25, 2021, during one of the performances. This piece is for solo electric bass and, so I assume, electronics. Even when the score is in French, it is easier to follow, as Toeplitz made some notes concerning timing this time.
Much of the piece doesn't sound like electric bass and is more like a piece of processed recordings of whatever kind. I wouldn't know what had I not known this is an electric bass. At seventy-one minutes, this is quite a long piece of music, and because of one heavy noise section (from the twenty-four to thirty-minute mark, not an easy-to-digest release. I admit that I skipped these sections a few times I played this piece. After thirty-five minutes, the high-frequency piece was also loud, but something that I enjoyed all the same. When it is dark, it is dark. Toeplitz once again proves that he is a fine master of radical music. Not that I needed more proof. Just like his disc with Zinc & Copper, the modern music version of Toeplitz is entirely different from many of his peers, and I wonder how such pieces are received. (FdW)
8,50€
In stock
CD
NURSE WITH WOUND
“The Ladies Home Tickler”
This expanded collection is the definitive version of The Ladies Home Tickler. An essential historical document for the new and lifelong NWW follower. Classic tape cut ups, radio sludge, surrealism and abstract chaos. The birth of NWW, a project that is now in its 5th decade: Recorded back 1980, the NWW line-up for these recordings was:
Steven Stapleton: Record player, cassette machine, noise.
Jim Thirlwell: Bass, ergonomic jack plug, Wasp.
William Bennett: Guitar, Wasp.
14,00€
In stock
CD
Andrew CHALK
“The End Times”
ICR is happy to be releasing the first new solo album by Andrew in five years, completed in 2022 at Impression Lointaine.
Thirteen beautiful melodic tracks that weave in and out of focus in an almost hallucinatory manner, evoking many different moods and emotions.
13 tracks in a digipack sleeve, mastered by Dennis Blackham with artwork by Andrew.
12,50€
In stock
CD
MOULDYCLIFF – POTTER – MOULDYCLIFF
“Orbits”
ORBIT - course, path, circuit, trajectory, rotation, revolution, circle, cycle, circumgyration.
This sequence of pieces, composed in the main by Jackson Mouldycliff, with additional interventions & modifications from Colin Potter & Phil Mouldycliff, was started back in 2019 but because of the Covid pandemic it was only recently completed. The work centres on loops, repititions & recurrent elements of sound assembled by MPM to accompany a series of mixed-media drawings by Phil, which in turn, takes as its starting point, star charts, celestial globes, planeteria, orraries, armillary spheres, astrolabes & astronomical clocks. Each of the eleven pieces has a title taken from a particular type of celstial orbit.
11,50€
In stock
2 CD
Sam ESH
“Jack of Diamonds / Faro Goddamn”
If Alan Licht ever continues with his revered Minimal Top Ten lists then Sam Esh would surely be added to the pile.
Penultimate Press is proud to release one of the most audacious and unrelenting entries in the entire minimal cannon. A collection of recordings from a true American eccentric maverick pioneer, Sam Esh. Originally available as 2 x cassettes in tiny editions on Mike Rep Hummel’s Old Age / No Age label these are now bound together on a 2CD set which does not interrupt the unrelenting creativity of Mr Esh. What does it sound like? Picture Moondog taking a turn for the far worse morphing into a way further crazed Legendary Stardust Cowboy who eschews any song tradition for an unrelenting hypnotic acoustic hurricane complete with glossolalia vocals.
This is raw primitive repetitive street blues, an acoustic freight train barreling through your brain. It is unlike anything you have encountered prior.
20,50€
Out of stock
5 CD box
Henning CHRISTIANSEN
“OP.176 Penthesilea”
A previously unreleased project of Henning Christiansen, monumental in scope, traversing years, countries and now, formats. The Henning Christiansen Archive is proud to finally present one of the crown jewels of the archive, the masterpiece ‘Penthesilea’ as a 2LP and 5CD set.
Pentheseila is one of the most ambitious works in the entire Henning Christiansen oeuvre. A large-scale work from the mid eighties based on the play of the same name by Heinrich von Kleist (1808). Both Henning and his widow, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, were enthusiastic about Kleist’s text, both making works around the themes within this portent text.
Henning Christiansen first developed a work around this text for the Rosenfest festival performed in Berlin in 1984. Rosenfest was curated by René Block and featured a variety of composers presenting works in response to Kleist’s work including Robert Ashley, “Blue” Gene Tyranny etc. Henning formulated a composition utilising tape, field recordings, voice, soprano, and violoncello alongside the home made instruments of Werner Durand.
The live presentation was then expanded upon and first performed two years later at Teatro Olímpico, Rome on the 8th November 1986 as directed by Carlo Quartucci. The two releases presented here include a 2 x vinyl LP of the Rosenfest recordings in 1984 and a 5CD set sharing the four and a half hour backing track prepared for the Teatro Olímpico performance in Rome in 1986. Together these two releases make up a substantial overview of one of the most significant works in the entire Christiansen canon.
45,00€
In stock
CD
Christian WOLFF
“A complete anthology of solo and duo violin pieces”
Black Truffle is pleased to announce its second release from New York violin duo String Noise (Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris), following on from their self-titled double-disc collection of compositions by Alvin Lucier (BT061). Here they present A Complete Anthology of Solo and Duo Violin Pieces by legendary American experimental composer Christian Wolff. The youngest and in some ways most radical of the composers of the New York School (alongside Brown, Cage, and Feldman), Wolff has ceaselessly rethought his approach throughout the seven decades of his composing career, moving from early experiments in radical reduction through indeterminacy, improvisation, and leftist political engagement to reach the limpid lyrical fragments of his most recent music.
Beautifully recorded across two days by Ryan Streber with Wolff in attendance, String Duo’s complete anthology of Wolff’s work for violin solo and duo covers the entirety of the composer’s career, from his earliest published work to a major new work written for this recording (presented in a tasteful non-chronological sequence). Written by the teenaged Wolff in 1950 during his brief period studying with Cage, Duo for Violins is a beautifully austere experiment in extreme reduction, using only three chromatically adjacent pitches without octave transpositions. Exploring the possible permutations of the limited material passing slowly between the two violins, the work prefigures the incessant worrying at small intervals of late Feldman works such as For Philip Guston or—fittingly—For Christian Wolff. This recording also presents premiere recordings of two other short duo pieces from the same year, recently rediscovered by Wolff in his papers, which use similarly reduced materials in a livelier, more dynamic manner.
Moving forward to the 1970s, the solo pieces Bread and Roses and The Death of Mother Jones belong to the period in which Wolff was drawing on political music, in this case two early 20th century songs that celebrate women labour activists. In both, arrangements of the traditional melodies are followed by a series of technically demanding free variations in a modernist style. The lyricism of these pieces is carried into the more fragmented, elusive works of the 90s onward. In the beautiful Six Melodies Variation (1993), written in tribute to Cage, fragments of Cage’s Six Melodies dissolve into anthemic snatches of the music of 18th century American composer William Billings (whose music Cage used in Apartment House 1776 and other works). The sixteen Small Duos for Violinists (2021) explore the radically disjunctive style of recent major Wolff works such as Long Piano (Peace March 11), where short ‘patches’ varying in style, density, and notation system are places next to each other without clear concern for conventional compositional principles. Here the individual duos range in length from a few seconds to just under two minutes, in energy from near stillness to churning rhythm, and in harmonic content from crystalline consonance to thorny dissonance. Including pieces inspired by the work of Rameau and Satie, like much of Wolff’s later music, the Small Duos manage to be at once lyrically immediate and subtly challenging: as Philip Thomas has written, ‘Our ears are not used to such a sustained rate of change’.
Published in a stylish digipak including extensive liner notes and wonderful reproductions of a series of Wolff’s delicate abstract works in pencil, crayon, and water colour, A Complete Anthology of Solo and Duo Violin Pieces is both an important addition to the documentation of Wolff’s oeuvre and an accessible survey of the many facets of his innovative music.
14,50€
Out of stock
3 CD box
Roland KAYN
“Infra (1978-79)”
Recent years have seen the release and reissue of dozens of hours of Roland Kayn's music, on several labels and in both physical and digital formats. Our interconnected yet chaotically imbued age seems to be the setting in which Kayn has truly found his audience. The scene is now set for one of the most momentous works in his oeuvre to return to the shelves. 'Infra'.
One of the titanic cybernetic works Kayn originally released on the Colosseum label in the late 70s and early 80s, 'Infra' (1978-79) has come to occupy a very special place in the hearts of fans lucky enough to have copies of the original vinyl box sets. Now lovingly remastered from the original archive masters by Kayn devotee Jim O'Rourke, 'Infra' has finally found its way to CD for a new generation of admirers to discover.
For the newcomer, it should be mentioned that Kayn's electronic music exists in a category all its own, bearing precious little resemblance to that of any of his composer peers. His work perhaps sits more naturally in today's non-idiomatic landscape of drones, field recordings, and modular synthesis, yet arrives accompanied by a poise and near-epic suggestion of natural phenomena simply found nowhere else. Stretching forwards across four decades to suggest new possibilities even now, 'Infra' represents a musical world ripe for rediscovery.
55,00€
Out of stock
CD
ORGANUM ELECTRONICS
“Wildness”
Label description :
Lighting flashes through the ether
And rain whips the earth violently
From the innermost depths, the pale light of candles
A constancy
A midnight torrent overflows and marks time in solitude
The cold air searches, sewing through the ground
Slowly changing and irresolute, nothing is lost
Paths are drawn, contorted by fierce winds that traverse the ground
In uncertain times and places
Order flows through chaos
Every step of the spiral is forever surging and altered
Yet everlasting
In a space, an electromagnetic ring swarms then rotates
The ring releases its own shackles and plunges through the depths of space
The sounds draw out to an inner sea
Turning to dark fundamental notes and overtones
Phenomena, life and sound, as it arises
To change the order of changes
The voice of wildness resonating in an impenetrable world
That continues to churn and swirl
Between cathode and anode – iron filings pattern around a magnet
Certainty changes, currents move the sand, heat dispatches the wind
The water rises, returning as rain
Changed to smoke and reappearing as vapour
The mass of the earth compressing the rocks
Fire changes everything, rising and falling, opening and closing
14,50€