Out of stock
CD
Éliane RADIGUE – Frédéric BLONDY
“Occam XXV”
In 2018 experimental festival Organ Reframed commissioned Éliane Radigue to write her first work for organ, 'Occam Ocean XXV'. Radigue worked closely with organist Frédéric Blondy at the Église Saint Merry in Paris before transferring the piece to Union Chapel for its premiere at Organ Reframed on 13 October 2018. The recording on this compact disc was made at a private session at Union Chapel on 8 January 2020.
'Occam XXV' inaugurates the very special record series of works exclusively commissioned by Organ Reframed, the organ-only, one of a kind experimental music festival, carefully curated by Scottish composer/performer and London's Union Chapel organ music director Claire M Singer.
'Occam XXV' is the latest chapter of Radigue's broader series of works Occam Ocean which she has been composing in the last decade. Carefully selected by Radigue she has closely collaborated with various extremely experienced yet sensitive instrumentalists. For Occam XXV Radigue collaborated with pianist, organist, composer, improviser, artistic director of the Orchestra of New Musical Creation, Experimentation and Improvisation (ONCEIM) Frédéric Blondy, which is their second collaboration in the Occam Ocean series. 'Occam XXV' premiered in 2018, and was later recorded privately in 2020 at London's Organ Reframed headquarters Union Chapel.
Packaged in a matt A5/DVD style digipack. Includes a full colour 16 page booklet containing text from Éliane Radigue, photographs of her writing Occam XXV in Paris and of the 1877 Henry Willis organ at Union Chapel.
18,00€
In stock
LP
Mark VERNON
“Time Deferred”
Mark Vernon’s solo noir album on Gagarin Records comes in an edition of 300 copies.
Cover art by Dennis “Ultra” Tyfus. Design by Meeuw. Caution: this record can cause dreamless nights.
Followers of the artist Mark Vernon will note a subdued and pensive mood on this new record. Muted and sepulchral, these tracks are in a minor key, a key which opens the door to a damp cellar of the imagination. Too-many legged spiders crawl over dusty violins. Time lurches, loops and echoes like excursions on slow motion railways in reverse. Concrète noir sombre séances for non-believers. Tauntological voices from the past provoke us. Half guessed ghosts, magnetic phantoms from funereal-to-reel tape recordings. The sibilant persistence of the deceased evokes the exhausted dread of waiting for a medical test result. Enigmatic messages thrown to the werewolves with nothing but cheap medication and some breathing exercises for support.
---
Mark Vernon is a Glasgow based sound artist who works with found tapes and acousmatic presence. His oeuvre explores themes of magnetic memory, audio archaeology, voyeurism and nostalgia.
A rich collection of domestic tape recordings; audio letters, dictated notes, answer-phone messages and other lost voices often find their way into his unorthodox soundworlds. These diverse elements are distilled into radiophonic compositions for broadcast, multi-channel diffusion, fixed media and live performances.
Together with his colleague Barry Burns he runs the renowned radio art festival Radiophrenia. Under the moniker Vernon & Burns the plunderfrolic duo's beguiling mix of Music Hall Revue and Musique Unconcrète has materialized in two critically acclaimed Gagarin albums, "The tune the old cow died of" and "The light at the end of the dial".
His and Hers and the Sun from Mark Vernon on Vimeo.
22,00€
In stock
Book + CD
Steve RODEN
“Oionos”
Notes from Steve Roden on Oionos:
Oionos was created for the exhibition The Grand Promenade, in Athens, Greece.
The exhibition took place in various archaeological and historical sites in central Athens, creating a situation for contemporary site specific works to be in dialogue with their historical surroundings.
While it was not originally offered as a possible site, I pleaded with the curator to allow me to work with architect Dimitris Pikionis’s Church of St. Dimitris Loumbardiardis, about a 10-minute walk from the main path of the Grand Promenade. Pikionis designed the original promenade which is still visible in several areas, but much of the area’s original designs were altered during the “restoration” before the 2004 Olympics. The small path that leads to the church gives a much stronger impression of Pikionis’s vision for the entire promenade as it was; so i wanted to use my work to draw viewers/listeners into his world.
When I first saw the small church it totally took my breath away, and I immediately began to think about a work that could exist in resonance with it — but not distract from it. The church itself is still in use, and I wanted to the work to be gentle and out of the way of the people who worship there. I decided to use the large tree in the front of the church for a hanging work that would a little bit of visual presence as well as sound which could blend with all of the insect noises and the overall quiet of the area.
The audio was built from field recordings and small “poor” objects such as tin whistles, toy harmonicas, and the like. These “instruments” suggested by the museum of musical instruments in Athens, where the proper instruments take up most of the museum, but there is a wonderful display case in the basement with musical toys, religious objects, and other sounding devices not considered musical instruments. I felt that these simple things related to Pikionis’s ideas about architecture and craft, and his interests in indigenous culture in conjunction with intellectual and modern culture. I felt there could be a relationship.
Oionos was created in 2006 for the exhibition The Grand Promenade, in Athens, Greece.
18,00€
Out of stock
5 CD box
Roland KAYN
“Tektra”
The last five years have seen the reemergence of a towering figure of electronic music. Through multiple boxed set releases, and a dedicated Bandcamp page releasing unheard works at an unfaltering pace, the work of pioneering cybernetic composer Roland Kayn has reached a wider audience than ever before.
Now, a bedrock work in establishing this reputation is available once more, as Tektra, his overarching landmark work of the early 1980s, is finally restored to availability after decades out of print.
Reissued by Reiger Records Reeks – the composer’s own label, now presided over by his daughter Ilse – Tektra here unfolds across 5 CDs. The new edition was mastered by Jim O’Rourke from a transfer of the original tapes present in the Lydia and Roland Kayn Archive. It implements Kayn’s directions on crossfades and edits as fully as possible, while also reincorporating almost 5 minutes of music previously
unavailable in digital format.
Kayn’s glacial, otherworldly electronic landscapes have always been somewhat at odds with the world of contemporary composition his background and training located him within. His rejection of compositional dogma and traditional musical structures eventually led him to discover a source of endless inspiration in the cybernetic generation of material, and the curatorial act of listening itself.
Perhaps this is why Kayn’s recognition is only approaching its zenith today: his work is far from the passive, unobtrusive world of “ambient”, but its embrace of extended duration, drone-like textures, and the exploration of space as timbre are undeniable shared attributes. Today’s most forward-looking musical practitioners – many of whom cite Kayn as a direct influence – have perhaps discovered a similar territory, at
the threshold point where mindblowing complexity approaches the overwhelming sensation of true immersion.
55,00€
Out of stock
LP
Michèle BOKANOWSKI
“Rhapsodia / Battements solaires”
*** Repressed ***
Michèle Bokanowski's art is one of densities, much like the density of a given colour, a given depth. Her sound textures are, indeed, profound, both in the space occupied by their frequencies and the sharp temporal trail they leave behind. Here lies the composer's immense talent that finds the right development for each sound, letting it blossom before altering it, adapting the musical structure to let the sounds “be”, even if it sometimes means returning to the most basic form, such as a loop. This is a sign of great honesty and artistic sensitivity; able to stand back and let the music become music. It is the most radical, the most accurate gesture of composition. The two pieces on this record, dissociated in time, both in their approach and destination, nevertheless reflect, each in its own way, Michèle Bokanowski's highly singular and insightful musical intuition. - François Bonnet, Paris, 2020
20,00€
In stock
2 LP
NIHILIST SPASM BAND
“Concert Villa Arson Nice”
Lorsque le premier album du Nihilist Spasm Band sort en 1968, aucun autre groupe au monde n’a enregistré pareil boucan. Chez ces Canadiens, qui s’exercent...
25,00€
In stock
LP
Bernard PARMEGIANI
“Mémoire Magnétique, Vol 2.”
Transversales is very glad to announce the release of Mémoire Magnétique Vol. 2 spanning 1966-1993, revelatory collection of short and secret music by electronic music pioneer Bernard Parmegiani.
Since the late 50's, Bernard Parmegiani, a major figure of electroacoustic music and a founding member of GRM has created some eighty two concerts music. From the start, Parmegiani’s work was closely linked to the screen, with dozens of documentaries, films, long features, animation films but also musical pieces for dance, stage or television. If many of his pieces are landmarks in the history of electroacoustic music (De Natura Sonorum, La Roue Ferris…), his application music compositions are strongly embedded in the subconscious landscape of the French public (Stade 2, Roissy Paris Airport…).
The second volume of this compilation allows us to discover some of unreleased rarities from Bernard Parmegiani’s personal archives and unpublished recordings which were composed for the screen or the performing arts.
24,00€
Out of stock
CD
Bernard PARMEGIANI
“Stries”
Bernard Parmegiani (1927–2013), the grand old man of French electroacoustic music, did not write much music for tape with live performers. Among them is “Stries” for the unusual combination of three live synthesizer players and tape.
Until recently, “Stries” had not been played live for some 30 years. This is the first complete recording, only part of it had been previously released on LP on the INA/GRM label.
“Stries” was written for the three synthesizer players of the Paris-based electroacoustic trio TM+, Yann Geslin, Laurent Cuniot and Denis Dufour, founded at the INA/GRM. Over the span of the ensemble’s lifetime, TM+ used a range of different instruments — analog synthesizers in the late 1970s and early digital synthesizers in the mid-1980s — and amassed a repertoire of about 40 compositions written especially for them.
Fortunately, Yann Geslin, of the INA/GRM, archived the original score by Parmegiani, as well as the parts for the instrumentalists. Also in GRM’s archives was the original analog reel-to-reel tape for the piece, as well as the analog 8-track recordings from the recording session.
Armed with this material, the electronic music trio of Colette Broeckaert, Martin Lorenz and Sebastian Berweck, together with Yann Geslin, recreated the piece with the aim of bringing it back to the stage as well as producing generic scores that could help get the piece into the repertoire of many instrumentalists. Their work is realized on this release.
“Stries” (1980) is a work in three parts based on the tapes of Parmegiani’s “Violostries” for violin & tape from 1963. The tape part is derived completely from recordings of the violin which Parmegiani masterfully alters to create an at times extremely dense, at other times pointillist piece of music.
The first part, “Strilento,” is a piece for tape solo and can as such be played alone, while the second and third movements — “Strio” and the eponymous “Stries” — make direct usage of the old tapes and the analog synthesizers of the players.
Sebastian Berweck’s liner notes detail the reconstruction of “Stries” for both performance and this recording.
Stries (1980) for 3 synthesizers and tape 44:59
1. Strilento 17:26
2. Strio 7:31
3. Stries 20:01
Broeckaert//Berweck//Lorenz, synthesizers
16,50€
In stock
CD
Aaron DILLOWAY & Jeph JERMAN
“Casual Collisions”
Casual Collisions is a collaborative album by two of the most prominent voices in experimental sound, Aaron Dilloway and Jeph Jerman. Recorded in 2013 and originally self-released on CDR by Jerman in a small edition, New Forces and White Centipede Noise are pleased to make these recordings widely available for the first time. Across four tracks the unique voices of these artists meld seamlessly together. Jerman's tactile, physical sounds are wrapped up in Dilloway's magnetic wizardry. Damaged electronics and hissing tapes form the canvas on which objects crunch, grind, and clatter. Temporality blurs as field recordings, loops, and live acoustic sounds meld together in sonic alchemy. Two masters in perfect sync. Remastered by BJ Nilsen, packaged in a full color 6-panel digipack.
10,00€
In stock
LP
SUN STABBED
“In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni”
"It has been roughly a decade since this French duo of gnarled guitar enthusiasts last surfaced as Sun Stabbed and I have certainly missed them, though Thierry Monnier and Pierre Faure's similarly excellent La Morte Young project helped fill the void nicely. Aside from the different line-ups, the main difference between the two projects is that this one is kind of a direct homage to some of New Zealand's most iconic purveyors of blacked drones and noisy guitars. While no discussion of that subject would be complete without Campbell Kneale, it is The Dead C and the woefully underheard Surface of the Earth that explicitly provide the most inspiration here. Characteristically, Monnier and Faure are admirably up to the task of continuing that fine tradition, as In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni is a feast of manipulated feedback, burned-out wreckage, and simmering drones. Occasionally it can be eerily beautiful and haunting, but I also like the parts that resemble an onstage brawl between Skullflower and Sunn O))). This is an instant noise/drone guitar classic."
Brainwashed
16,00€
In stock
Magazine
PERSONAL BEST
“N°8”
The 8th issue of Lasse Marhaug's fanzine Personal Best.
Features in-depth interviews with:
Rachel Shearer
Peter Rehberg
GX Jupitter-Larsen
Benjamin Nelson
Peter Brötzmann
Jana Winderen
Otomo Yoshihide
Ghédalia Tazartès
Richly illustrated throughout.
100 pages, CMYK offset print on uncoated paper, glued spine.
10,00€
In stock
2 LP
Kassel JAEGER
“Swamps / Things”
Over the last decade, Kassel Jaeger, the moniker of the Paris-based composer, writer / theorist, producer, and director of the Groupe de Recherches Musicales (GRM), François Bonnet, has meticulously sculpted a body of multidisciplinary work that rests at the forefront contemporary electronic and electroacoustic practice. On July 10th he will release his new album ‘Swamp / Things’ on Shelter-Press.
Rigorously experimental without sacrificing the intimacies of self, his efforts as a composer and musician extend across live contexts and numerous critically heralded solo releases, as well as collaborations with Jim O’Rourke and Lucy Railton, both contributing to the record, alongside Stephen O’Malley, Stephan Mathieu, Akira Rabelais, Oren Ambarchi, and James Rushford, and others.
Deeply invested in the potential of sound as an elemental form - a root phenomenon with a profound capacity for meaning, as much as a multidimensional material for creative process and ideas – Jaeger’s work across numerous fields, be it in text, action, or sound presents a crucial bridge between the optimistic, philosophical origins of electronic and electroacoustic music, the present and where they have yet to delve.
Sound is abstract. When the source is elusive, narrative and meaning shift between the concrete and obscure. With his first solo LP with Shelter Press, Swamps/Things, Kassel Jaeger wades into this foggy, conceptual realm. From memory and metaphor - sliding fluidly through the imagistic and emotive - emerges an immersive, cavernous world that rethinks electroacoustic music on organic terms.
‘Swamps / Things’ was conceived as an opera without distinct characters or text. It draws Kassel Jaeger into his own history, experiences, and the unlikely double of the swamp, a landscape that has held literal and metaphorical sway over him since childhood. Merging 8 works as a total environment, abstaining from distinct shape or discrete articulation, across the album's breadth, sound becomes a shifting mirror for the bubbling, ordered chaos of organic life.
Resting at the junction of concept, emotion, and phenomena - tapping the multidimensional potential for narrative and meaning possessed by each - Swamps / Things encounters an artist of remarkable craft, delving toward the unknown, deploying organized sonority as object and environment, as much as action, movement, passage, and arc. Seemingly possessed by an entropy entirely its own, the temporal gives way to the poetics of space, while the density of an endlessly evolving climate, laden with cacophonous happenings, renders itself still. Flickering images of the natural world - memory and the imagined reformed as sound - present an operatic double for human action and thought. From deep, fog like banks of minimalist long tone, to industrial clamors left as tracks in the mud, or the collisions of shifting pulses, overtones, and textures - captured from across the murky, drone laden waters between the acoustic and synthetic realms - moody, howling cries and tense meditations merge in ambient sheets, capturing a fleeting image of where decomposition gives way to new growth.
A remarkably intimate and forward-thinking aural balm, bristling with complex beauty, Shelter press is overjoyed to present Kassel Jaeger’s Swamps / Things. Two immersive, intoxicating sides overflowing with humanity and ideas.
Sound material collected and performed by François J. Bonnet
with additional help by Lucy Railton (River Wensum Roe Deers) and Jim O’Rourke (NYC Bobcats).
Artwork by Cameron Jamie.
Mastering by Giuseppe Ielasi.
Music composed by François J. Bonnet.
27,00€
In stock
2 CD
Alvin LUCIER
“String noise”
Continuing Black Truffle's series of releases documenting the recent work of legendary American experimental composer Alvin Lucier, String Noise presents three major works for violin solo and duo composed between 2004 and 2019. Lucier has developed his compositions in close collaboration with many instrumentalists over the years; the three works presented here are performed by the violinists for whom they were originally written, Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris, who together make up the innovative violin duo String Noise, and have premiered works by a plethora of major figures in contemporary music. The long-form compositions presented here continue Lucier's life-long exploration of acoustic phenomena, drawing on aspects of some of his most well-known compositions and extending them into new instrumentation. Tapper (2004) extends the experiments with echolocation – gathering information about an environment by listening to the echoes of sounds produced within it – that Lucier began with his classic 1969 work Vespers, where performers explore a space equipped with hand-held pulse oscillators. Here, the same principle is put into practice for solo violin, the body of which the performer taps repeatedly with the butt end of the bow while moving around the performance space. The result is a subtly shifting web of echoes and resonances produced by the reflection of the sharp tap off the surfaces of the room (in this case, the Drawing Center in New York). In Love Song (2016), two violinists are connected by a long wire stretched between the bridges of their instruments, causing the sounds played on one violin to also be heard through the other. As the two violinists play long tones using only the open E string, they move in a circular motion around the performance space, thus changing the tension of the wire, which creates a remarkable array of variations in pitch and timbre ranging from ghostly wavering pitches reminiscent of a singing saw to near-electronic tones. In Halo (2019), one or more violinists walk slowly through the performance space in a zig-zag pattern while sustaining long tones. As in Tapper, the consistent sound production reveals the sonic properties of the environment. As the title of the piece suggests, the outcome is a shimmering halo of sound produced by the reflection of the violin's extended tones off the walls and ceiling of the performance space (in this case, Alvin's home).
2CD release presented in a deluxe 4-panel digipak with liner notes by Alvin Lucier, live images and artist bios. Sleeve design by Lasse Marhaug. Mastered by Tom Hamilton.
14,50€
Out of stock
LP
MIAUX
“Black Space, White Cloud”
Repress of the album with blue coloured sleeves.
"Following two singles, two albums, and a bunch of compilation tracks, we are proud to present Miaux’s third LP. Mia Prce, originally from Sarajevo and a Belgian resident since 1989, was reared on a psychedelic diet of Krautrock and similarly serpentine music by her artist parents who were part of the Antwerp-based (and over fifty years old) Ercola collective. Beautiful songs that break hearts without using a sharp object! More tears for the creatures of the night.
Limited edition of 300 copies. "
20,00€
In stock
2 LP
Stine JANVIN
“Fake Synthetic Music”
PAN tout a real beauty with Stine Janvin’s scintillating vocal suite ‘Fake Synthetic Music’ - a transfixing and distinguished demonstration of the voice as a hugely flexible instrument, presented in a range of minimalist yet extreme, probing scenarios providing a radical new perspective on familiar sounds.
Conceived as a full-body physical and ambient live performance for theatres, clubs and galleries, ‘Fake Synthetic Space’ is an intently focussed and singular follow-up to Stine’s previous solo LP ‘In Labour’ [Pica Disk, 2014] and her input to last year’s Native Instrument release ‘Camo’ for Shelter Press. Where both of those releases found her vocals combined with field recordings in myriad ways, the Norwegian artist’s latest side is stripped right back to vocals and FX, offering a visceral investigation of her full frequency range with results that explore the deeply uncanny auditory phenomena of otoacoustic emissions in melodic, minimal sequences referencing pop, techno, and trance.
Placed in a broad history of extended vocal investigation ranging from Dadaist poetry to the resonant acoustics of Alvin Lucier, the minimalist abstraction of Steve Reich, and the unearthly sonic spectrum covered by Maja Ratkje, ‘Fake Synthetic Music’ is anchored in the modern day by its use of clinically technoid pulses and repetition, and not least by its ambiguous title, especially in the age of fake news. Through the prism of the voice, Stine both literally and metaphorically reflects contemporary obsessions with authenticity and artifice, using trickery and illusion to strangely reinforce her own sense of self and likewise provide listeners with a life affirming experience.
Between the alien cadence of ‘Mood’, the playfully invasive sounds elicited from Glitch’, and most strikingly in the mesmerising stereo swing of ‘Like Right Now’, Stine presents genuinely shocking rearrangements of her voice quite unlike anything out there right now, and by the time the escalating pitches of ‘Tripple A’ and the whooping avant-jazz-techno of ‘Zen Garden’ have exerted their effect, it’s becomes patently, piercingly clear that Stine’s sound art operates on a remarkably incisive plane of synaesthetic perception
27,00€
In stock
LP
DRØNE
“The Stilling”
The 4th album by drøne, (Mark Van Hoen & Mike Harding), is the 3rd for Anna von Hausswolff's label, Pomperipossa Records. Featuring Zachary Paul on violins, Charlie Campagna (bass and ‘cello) and Katt Newlon on ‘cello, the strings add lush, warm layers to a darker, edgier sound. Gabi Strong debuts on guitar and the voices of a host of vocalists inc. Claire Belhassine, Celia Eydeland, Bana Haffar, Pepa Ivanova, Nour Mobarak & Brisa Romero.
With the trademark drøne sounds of static, radio voices, field recordings, modular synthesizer and found sounds, recording chance sounds right up to the final mix add to the dynamism and energy of the album.
16,00€
In stock
CD
Lars AKERLUND – Eryck ABECASSIS
“Falls”
Eryck Abecassis and Lars Åkerlund started their Falls project to investigate the possibilities of achieving instability with synthesizers and electronic instruments. With only one dramatic change in their strategy: they employed both the same branded instruments to do that and it worked.
Eryck Abecassis is a French musician who has been working in diverse areas of music production: producing his own albums and works for chamber orchestras, theaters, installations and cinema. He got commissions from such institutions like INA-GRM, Radio France and Institut Français and played at many festivals like Amplitude, Presences, IRCAM. Now he mostly works with modular synthesizer and computer.
Lars Åkerlund is a sound artist and composer and performer of electronic as well as electroacoustic music hailing from Sweden. With a classical training, he also works in the music underground scene. He founded bands such as P.I.T.T. (among others, with Zbigniew Karkowski) and the Lucky People Center and recently the LLLSD (Lab for Life-Long Sound Dysfunctions) which toured in South East Asia, China and Japan during 2018 and 2019.
He performs solo and in collaboration with other artists, film makers and choreographers. Åkerlund lives in Stockholm working in the studio with computers, controllers and live electronic equipment such as an amplified monochord.
In eight tracks of “Falls” they drive you to the state of ecstasy. Working with a minimal and an accurate attention for the structures, they gain such a level when they lose control of their two Doepfer Dark Energies that it starts hypnotizing the brains. Subliminal thoughts, experiences and sonic hallucinations may suddenly erupt to the surface. Take care when using these powerful and uncompromising musical dream machine which will disorientate you in its subversive sonic masses and spectrum.
13,50€
Out of stock
LP
Daniel MENCHE
“Melting Gravity”
Daniel Menche follows up his triple CD opus Sleeper with the razor drone constructs of Melting Gravity. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, Menche is an iconic musician with three decades working with intense noise, immersive ambience, and turbulent field recordings. With Melting Gravity, Menche continues to carve his spot as a figurehead in the experimental community.
The title of Melting Gravity refers to an allegory on the human pursuit of transcendence with all of its connotations to weightlessness, ascension, flight, out-of-body experiences, and just getting high. Gravity, on the other hand, becomes that which negates and nullifies those transcendent pursuits. In the context of this particular allegory, gravity is the devil. Music, long a vehicle aimed towards transcendent ideals, becomes the weapon to defeat gravity, to defeat the devil. Daniel Menche wields the weapon of music in composing the mercurial grandeur that is Melting Gravity.
Implementing an elegant arc of acceleration and dissolve, Menche presents a slow-motion tumble of drones from his signature manipulation of FM synthesis, oscillators, and sustained tones from various stringed instruments. The tangles and tendrils of these extended frequencies are bright and liquid, rich in harmonic complexities though mottled with a scrap metal discord. Menche balances these slippery, luminous overtones with a dub-inspired lattice of recursive bass tones. Read as an industrial mantra or as amplified minimalism, Melting Gravity stands as an exemplary work in Menche’s storied catalogue of recordings.
Daniel Menche’s lengthy discography contains over 60 albums, many of which have been published by some of the most esteemed experimental record labels. Over the years he has worked with Editions Mego, Sige, Touch Music, Alien8 Records, Ash International, Utrecht Records, and many others. He has collaborated with Mamiffer, Andrew Liles, KK Null, John Wiese, Aaron Bradford Turner, Joe Preston, Anla Courtis, Zbigniew Karkowski, Kiyoshi Mizutani, and Kevin Drumm. He has performed extensively in North America, Japan, Europe, and Australia.
- Jim Haynes
20,00€
Out of stock
LP
PUCE MARY
“The Drought”
"Bringing together introspective examination with literary frameworks by writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Jean Genet, Puce Mary’s compositions manifest an ongoing power struggle within the self towards preservation. The traumatised body serves as a dry landscape of which obscured memories and escape mechanisms fold reality into fiction, making sense of desire, loss and control. The Drought presents both danger and opportunity; through rebuilding a creative practice centred on first person narrative and a deliberate collage of field recordings and sound sources Puce Mary injects an acute urgency across the album seeking resilience"
20,50€
Out of stock
CD
Vanessa ROSSETTO
“you & i are earth”
"you & i are earth" begins with the sound of a woman talking. She recalls memories of being a young girl during the London Blitz fire bombings of World War II. She speaks calmly at first, with memories of the event slowly creeping up on her. These impressions soon become illustrated through Rossetto's own collage of mechanized cacophony. Eventually, they develop into her signature Feldman-esque flowing-out of strings.
The woman’s voice belongs to none other than Rossetto’s mother, and was recorded by Rossetto herself. Through this assemblage of recorded and created sources, we span two forms of devastation: the human, conjured in the specter of the recorded voice, and the inhuman, the natural and inorganic matter whose alienation provides a Hitchcock-worthy horror soundtrack.
Vanessa Rossetto is an American composer, improviser and painter based in New York City. She primarily uses field recordings, chamber instrumentation, electronics and a wide array of objects to create structures that expose the web of narrative threads underlying the everyday sound world around us. Rossetto has released material via Erstwhile, Kye, Unfathomless, Another Timbre, No Rent and other labels including her own Music Appreciation, and has been featured in publications such as The Wire, Tiny Mix Tapes, SPIN, Signal to Noise and No Depression.
12,00€
In stock
2 LP
Paul DEMARINIS
“Songs Without Throats”
Paul DeMarinis is a key figure in the history of electronic music since the 1970s. Collaborator with the likes of Robert Ashley, David Behrman, and David Tudor, DeMarinis is a pioneer in the development of gallery sound installation and digital music technologies. Black Truffle is thrilled to announce the release of a double-LP collection, selected in collaboration with the artist, focussing on DeMarinis’s exploration of synthesized voice and the digital analysis and manipulation of speech sounds. Drawing together tracks dispersed on compilations along with a number of pieces previously unheard in any form, Songs Without Throats offers a revelatory look into DeMarinis’s alternately accessible and uncompromising production between 1978 and 1995.
Opening with a mesmerizing piece from 1978 pairing the voice and tamboura playing of Anne Klingensmith with strings of letters spat out by a Speak n’ Spell to the accompaniment of the randomised melodic patterns of DeMarinis’s homebuilt electronic instrument ‘The Pygmy Gamelan’, the record then dispenses with the live human voice in favour of its recorded and synthetic doubles. We follow DeMarinis’s restless probing of the possibilities of new technologies, from the hacked Speak n’ Spell (which gives us the austere ‘Et Tu, Klaatu’ 1979, another duet with Klingensmith, this time on bowed psaltery, in which the toy’s synthetic voice is stretched into an alien song) through to the use of digital audio samples manipulated with home computer technology in the early 1990s (including a remarkable dream-like collage piece that weaves a rare recording of Stalin’s voice and bird-like electronic twittering derived from its formant-glides into a rich tapestry of samples reflective of the dictator’s musical life).
In between we get a rich sampling of DeMarinis’s signature work with speech melodies – usually unnoticed melodic inflections that lie within speech patterns – which he analyses and translates into synthesized musical accompaniment. These pieces draw on a wide variety of textual and vocal sources, which range from the hilarious to the menacing (‘Cincinatti [1830-1850]’ sets a detailed description of butchering techniques, for example) and an equally broad range of musical conceptions, combining elements as seemingly unlikely as Beethoven’s Opus 31 pianos sonatas and the sounds of 80s synth pop. The results are an extraordinary combination of the alien and the familiar. As DeMarinis himself characterises his work with vocal synthesis, this is ‘a kind of signal that simultaneously carried and obscured meaning and ideation, even as it created a sound world totally alien in esthetic’.
Presented in a deluxe gatefold sleeve with archival images and liner notes by Paul DeMarinis.
Design by Stephen O’Malley. Mastered and cut by Rashad Becker at D&M, Berlin
29,50€
In stock
Book
Ursula BLOCK & Michael GLASMEIER
“Broken music”
*** Back in stock ***
Broken Music is an essential compendium for records created by visual artists. The publication was edited by Ursula Block and Michael Glasmeier and originally published in 1989 by DAAD. Broken Music focuses on recordings, record-objects, artwork for records, and record installations made by thousands of artists between WWII and 1989.
It also includes essays by both editors as well as Theodor W. Adorno, René Block, Jean Dubuffet, Milan Knizak, László Moholy-Nagy, Christiane Seiffert, and Hans Rudolf Zeller, as well as a flexi disc of the Arditti Quartet performing Knizak’s “Broken Music.” The centerpiece of the publication is a nearly 200-page bibliography of artists’ records.
Works chosen for the publication revolved around four criteria: (1) record covers created as original work by visual artists; (2) record or sound-producing objects (multiples/editions/sculptures); (3) books and publications that contain a record or recorded-media object; and (4) records or recorded media that have sound by visual artists.
Artists documented in the volume include Vito Acconci, albrecht/d., Laurie Anderson, Guillaume Apollinaire, Karel Appel, Arman, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, John Baldessari, Hugo Ball, Claus van Bebber, John Bender, Harry Bertoia, Jean-Pierre Bertrand, Joseph Beuys, Mel Bochner, Claus Böhmler, Christian Boltanski, KP Brehmer, William Burroughs, John Cage, Henri Chopin, Henning Christiansen, Jean Cocteau, William Copley, Philip Corner, Merce Cunningham, Hanne Darboven, Jim Dine, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Fischli and Weiss, R. Buckminster Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, Jack Goldstein, Peter Gordon, Hans Haacke, Richard Hamilton, Bernard Heidsieck, Holger Hiller, Richard Huelsenbeck, Isidore Isou, Marcel Janco, Servie Janssen, Jasper Johns, Joe Jones, Thomas Kapielski, Allan Kaprow, Martin Kippenberger, Per Kirkeby, Cheri Knight, Milan Knizak, Richard Kriesche, Christina Kubisch, Laibach, John Lennon, Sol Lewitt, Roy Lichtenstein, Annea Lockwood, Paul McCarthy, Meredith Monk, Josef Felix Müller, Piotr Nathan, Hermann Nitsch, Albert Oehlen, Frank O’Hara, Claes Oldenburg, Yoko Ono, Dennis Oppenheim, Nam June Paik, Charlemagne Palestine, A.R. Penck, Tom Phillips, Robert Rauschenberg, The Red Crayola, Ursula Reuter Christiansen, Gerhard Richter, Jim Rosenquist, Dieter Roth, Gerhard Rühm, Robert Rutman, Sarkis, Thomas Schmit, Conrad Schnitzler, Kurt Schwitters, Selten Gehörte Musik, Richard Serra, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Keith Sonnier, Strafe für Rebellion, Jean Tinguely, Moniek Toebosch, Tristan Tzara, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, Emmett Walsh, Andy Warhol, William Wegman, and Lawrence Weiner.
Ursula Block is a curator living in Berlin, Germany. From 1981 until 2014, she ran gelbe Musik, a gallery and record shop in Berlin that featured work by artists at the crossroads between music and art.
Michael Glasmeier is a professor, writer, and editor living in Berlin, Germany. Since the early 1980s, he has curated dozens of shows that explore the intersection between the visual arts, music, film, and language.
34,00€
Out of stock
LP
ORGUE AGNES
“A Une Gorge “
**** Back in stock, our favourite record since months ****
This is electrified ping-pong music. This music pings and pongs.
Ping-pong balls are commonly used in experimental piano music.
They are chancey things. And they are cheap; you can buy a wack of them for next to nothin’.
Orgue Agnès bounces in loose time and dances and reflects. It is reflective bouncing dance music.
With little effort - or little to no intention – ping-pong balls set off a derive of small detailed sounds.
They are lit alive - light and lighthearted.
They jump for joy. I am talking about Orgue Agnès and ping-pong balls.
A lot of A Une Gorge sounds like it was made with electrifc ping-pong balls bouncing inside of a throat or
a mouth.
A mouth-full of electricity.
A throat (like a mouth) is a filter.
« wah wah woah wow-wah. »
A mouth-throat is a wah. Une gorge is a dancehall.
Orgue Agnès A Une Gorge and this music sounds like it was made inside of one.
As strange and wonderful as it sounds."
Eric Chenaux
15,50€
In stock
LP
BAZUINSCHAL
“Bazuingeschal”
One night, a few years ago, Danish saxophonist Mette Rasmussen blew so extremely hard on her instrument that Dennis Tyfus - in bed in Belgium, fending off animals in his sleep - woke up with permanent ear and brain damage.
Sometime later, Rasmussen travelled to Belgium to record with the afflicted Tyfus. The result is a fruit cake, kneaded with the bloodied hands of a butcher. It sounds like a room but it's pitted with chewy rubber, spat onto a cassette recorder that is playing and recording at the same time whilst Lisa Simpson grins and presses a tiny yellow foot on the tape. It's 'free' and it's 'jazz', like a steamed-up window in a car park toilet.
Edition of 300 copies
18,00€
Out of stock
2 LP
Bernard BASCHET
“4 espaces sonores”
Excellent release from april 2018 but not stock so far.
Rare 1979 recording of Bernard Baschet performing on his Sound Sculptures. The Baschet brothers are known worldwide as creators of Sound Sculptures, fantastic shapes of moulded metal and glass, which combine the visual arts with music. François Baschet had always been fascinated by acoustics, by the relationships between the shape and material of an instrument and the beauty of its sound. Bernard Baschet was passionately interested in contemporary music and firmly believed that such instruments were the proper tools for modern music, for they offered to the artist and performer a personal means of expression denied by electronic devices. Together the brothers began to design and produce Sound Sculptures, which could also be regarded as musical instruments. Circa 1965, Bernard worked alongside Pierre Schaeffer as a member of the GRM (Musical Research Group) on the elaboration of what was to become Schaeffer's Traité des objets musicaux (Treatise on Musical Objects). The Baschet brothers also created structures and instruments of all sizes, including bell towers, windmills and fountains, using the natural elements of wind and water to make music. Bernard Baschet was especially proud of his pedagogical work amongst deprived and handicapped children, with the instrumentaium made up of fourteen pieces.
25,00€
In stock
CD
Francisco MEIRINO
“The Ruins”
From the ruins of hours of multi-channel recordings created during his residency at EMS Stockholm, Francisco Meirino has created a definitive statement of time and discovery.
Inspired by the Serge and Buchla modular synthesizers, he felt as if he were standing before ancient ruins, familiar yet unknown. After allowing these recordings to sit and decay over time, he discovered, when he finally came back to them, that all that was left were the pieces and ruins of sonic archives.
The end result is a masterpiece statement, an exercise in abandonment and discovery.
The ruins Francisco Meirino has unearthed reach deep into our psyche from seemingly the most unlikely source, machines, evoking a story of damage and resurrection.
12,00€
In stock
2 LP
Steve REICH
“Drumming”
Steve Reich’s Drumming is regarded as one of the most important musical works of the last century. Distilled through his studies of African percussion in Ghana during 1970 and Balinese gamelan music, Reich revolutionized our understanding of polyrhythms, sculpting a new sonic territory to illuminate the radical potential of Minimalism.
Divided into four sections, performed without pause, Drumming is written for eight small tuned drums, three marimbas, three glockenspiels, piccolo and voice. The singers recite melodic patterns that mimic the sounds of the instruments, gradually rising to the surface and then fading out. The overall effect can be transfixing – pulling listeners into the rhythm and possessing a raw immediacy, directness and energy.
The premier performances of Drumming took place in December 1971 in New York City – first at The Museum of Modern Art, then at Brooklyn Academy of Music and finally at Town Hall where this recording was made – and featured the composer along with a cast of longtime collaborators including Art Murphy, Steve Chambers, Russ Hartenberger, James Preiss, Jon Gibson, Joan La Barbara, Judy Sherman, Jay Clayton, Ben Harms, Gary Burke, Frank Maefsky and James Ogden.
Originally released in 1972 by gallerist John Gibson in a small private edition, Drumming represents the culmination of Reich’s investigation into rhythmic phase relationships and its early realization captures a remarkably organic feel, especially compared to the more widely known version on Deutsche Grammophon from 1974.
This first-time vinyl reissue and first-time CD release has been carefully remastered from the original master tapes.
29,00€
Out of stock
LP
Hanno LEICHTMANN / Valerio TRICOLI
“La Casa delle Chimere”
Hanno Leichtmann: percussion, loops and synthesiser. Valerio Tricoli: Revox B77. Recorded live at Plivka, Kiev, 2017. Mixing and additional production by Hanno Leichtmann at Static Music, Berlin.
Hanno Leichtmann is a sound artist and musician from Berlin.
Valerio Tricoli is an italian musician currently living in Munich.
Mastered by Jacques Beloeil. Limited edition of 200 copies
16,00€
Out of stock
LP
BIBLIOTEQ MDULAIR
“Primitive electronics brain dance”
In collaboration with copypasta editions.Biblioteq Mdulair is an orchestra made of some 15 analogue function generators played by Swiss based artists Emma Souharce and Daniel Maszkowicz. In their concerts they often collaborate with the analogue modular video synthesizer SYNKIE creating a total audiovisual symbiosis with dozens of CTR televisions. This first release is a live performance recorded at Cinéma Nova in Brussels (Belgium): a hypnotic ambient noise evolving towards a magma of colliding frequencies growing in intensity with an acid beat climax. The music constructs itself before a dripping decomposition from a telluric harsh noise landing down to a soft stroll under a light rain.
14,00€
Out of stock
LP
Francisco MEIRINO
“La Plainte”
Jungle spirits, shamanism, trance music and other “surprises” are stacked, superimposed and spiral in space and our ears in a powerfully captivating way. A first-rate cathartic whirlwind, for a fireworks display highlighting the swarming material and meta-sounds of human population. This piece by Francisco Meirino is largely composed by using samples from the sound archives of the MEG (Ethnographic Museum of Geneva).Highly recommended.
20,00€
In stock
2 LP
TAJ MAHAL TRAVELLERS
“August 1974”
High quality reissue of the monumental work August 1974 by Japanese experimental music ensemble Taj Mahal Travellers. Pressed on 180gr. vinyl with extensive liner notes by Julian Cowley.In April 1972 a group of Japanese musicians set off from Rotterdam in a Volkswagen van. As they crossed Europe and then made their way through Asia they made music in a wide range of locations. They also paid close attention to the changing scene and to differing ways of life. Midway through May they reached their destination, the iconic Taj Mahal on the bank of the Yamuna river in Agra, India. The Taj Mahal Travellers had fulfilled physically the promise of the name they adopted when they formed in 1969. But their music had always been a journey, a sonic adventure designed to lead any listener’s imagination into unfamiliar territory.The double album August 1974 was their second official release. The first July 15, 1972 is a live concert recording, but on 19th August 1974 the Taj Mahal Travellers entered the Tokyo studios of Nippon Columbia and produced what is arguably their definitive statement. The electronic dimension of their collective improvising was coordinated, as usual, by Kinji Hayashi. Guest percussionist Hirokazu Sato joined long-term group members Ryo Koike, Seiji Nagai, Yukio Tsuchiya, Michihiro Kimura, Tokio Hasegawa and Takehisa Kosugi.August 1974 captures vividly the characteristic sound of the Taj Mahal Travellers, haunting tones from an unusual combination of instruments, filtered through multiple layers of reverb and delay. Their music has strong stylistic affinities with the trippy ambience of cosmic and psychedelic rock, but the Taj Mahal Travellers were tuning in to other vibrations, drawing inspiration from the energies and rhythms of the world around them rather than projecting some alternative reality. Films of rolling ocean waves often provided a highly appropriate backdrop for their lengthy improvised concerts. This is truly electric music for the mind and body.
28,00€