In stock
CD, Book
Lawrence ENGLISH
“Viento”
In the summer of 2010 I had the opportunity to visit Antarctica through an invitation extended by the Argentine Antarctic Division. It was nothing short of life-altering, as I am sure anyone would suspect.
Upon departing from Buenos Aires for the iced continent the Hercules transport aircraft, under direction of the Argentine military, made a routine stop at an airbase outside Rio Gallegos.
What was meant to be a few hours layover turned into several days as, on landing, a strong wind storm blew in unexpectedly. Conditions exceeded expectations, and before long it was clear the transport could not take off. The situation was only compounded by adverse weather along the Antarctic Peninsula.
Whilst the scientists and military personnel we were travelling with bunkered down in their quarters, I found myself drawn outside into the howling air. The wind in Patagonia is, well, breathtaking. Literally, there were moments where it was so physical, that it was difficult to catch my breath. Across three days I recorded abandoned buildings, lone trees folded over in fields of tundra-like grasses, quivering road signs, wailing fences and other objects shaken into life by the wind. It wasn't a comfortable experience by any means, but the multiplicity of sounds I was able to capture, I hope, speak for themselves.
The Antarctic recordings were made during two blizzards at Marambio and Esperanza bases. During the blizzard in Marambio, the temperature dropped to -40 degrees centigrade (with wind chill) which made recording particularly challenging. The wind battered the base’s structures and telecommunications equipment, making a range of unsettling, phasing choral drones and deep low frequency vibrations that resonated inside the base itself. The blizzard at Esperanza was mild by comparison, but still strong enough to coat penguins in layer of snow as they huddled together during the worst of the storm.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of completing these compositions and since that time, I have had the pleasure to diffuse them on numerous occasions. With those experiences in mind, as well as the format on which these works are now being made available, I have revisited them and completely remixed and remastered the pieces.
Listening back to these recordings I am struck by the sheer physicality of the wind. It's rare that you feel physically reduced by the motion of air, but in both Patagonia and Antarctica that is just how I felt. A small speck of organic dust in a howling storm.
Recorded on location in Patagonia and Antarctica in the summer of 2010.
Mixed and mastered at Negative Space 2022.
18,00€
In stock
LP
Natalie BERIDZE
“Of Which One Knows”
From Natalie Beridze
“Of Which One Knows”, was written and produced between 2007-2021.
Such unreleased material is a quintessential backdrop to an artist’s processes, as it has obviously never landed in any full bodies of work. It does however gain humble significance, which feels approachable, which is about absence and hence always fresh, drifting somewhere between remembrance and obliviousness.
I see sound in smells, maps and mischievously put random words in poems, as they provoke pivotal subconscious algorithms in me.
Every blissful moment of the divine process of music-making, that goes back to a sacred process of a child at play - a burning response to the intensity of the neigh to invisible blueness of half-formed ice.
The span of time for this music reminds me of my Dad’s studio. Infinite thick wooden drawers that crackle clack, bounce clatter, peal, rattle the same way as before. There is no decay crumbling, perishing or rot in the objects inside. Clippers, liner pens, tracing paper, cutters for grown-ups, unused razors and their tiny spare blade packs, tapes, compasses, leather and metal roll meters, are all intact. Random snapshots, outdated student ids and driving licenses in leather sliders, letters, postmarks, piled up separately in intense small section drawers. All’s in perfect order. All intact.
Layouts, house models with tiny tables and chairs and swimming pools with people inside, others by the fireplace, some holding cocktails, others reading books- are very dusty, smelling of glue and cardboard, all intact. Some stacked one on top of another, others unfinished on the modelling table under the stained swinging arm desk lamp.
24,00€
In stock
LP
Chris ABRAHAMS
“Follower”
On the opening track, Costume, bass piano meanders through a wilderness of de-tuned bells and organ swells; a strange sort of festival. Low frequency sighs evenly punctuate, like a pump or a heartbeat. It’s a procession that takes it time as it wanders the terrain, brought to a close with transcendent distortion. On track 2, New Kind of Border, muscular modal piano surfs among waves of percussion and analogue synthesisers. A buffeting travel.
Follower is Abrahams’ 6th album for Room 40 and showcases his continuing interest in the ambiguous spaces between music and noise; tonality and atonality; rhythm and texture. All four tracks have piano as a key factor: in one instance, high-pitched and atonal; in another, emotive yet distant as if projected on to a screen. Follower presents the listener with a sound world of colourful juxtapositions, rich orchestration and organically open forms.
24,00€
In stock
LP
Thierry MONNIER – Bruce RUSSELL
“Les Français sont les ennemis du Pacifique”
1.
Together with Thierry, just before his departure, we, some of his close friends, decided to realise this record. A promise and a desire to be able to listen to these electric exchanges engraved on vinyl. This record was made possible thanks to a subscription and various donations. Any profits from sales will be donated to 102 rue d'Alembert in Grenoble.
2.
For many he was the person at the other end of the phone or email at Metamkine’s. For others he was the voice of experimental music on Radio Campus and an imaginative, considerate and tenacious programmer at Le 102 in Grenoble. He also was this diligent companion with whom to attend festivals, share enthusiasm about a performance, or the beer and conversation we’d rather have during the next one. He additionally was the hands and brains of Doubtful Sounds, the catalogue of which label demonstrates the highest of eclectic standards, the will to support comrade artists to the further end of their experimentations, and an authentic passion for the record medium. Lastly, he was of course one of the two guitars of Sun Stabbed, a member of La Morte Young, and a solo artist we would not have mind getting more performances and record releases from. In those, he was exploring the possibilities of the prepared guitar with modesty and an infinite patience, occasionally combining it with dictaphone or Revox-size magnetic tape.
[…]
While he would appear as an indoorsy creature, Thierry had developed a passion for New-Zealand that fed off a combine taste for geography, anthropology, and the very distinctive manner of handling guitars that a handful of experimenters have developed since the 1990s. This other side of the world had become the destination of some of his travels, and Bruce Russell (The Dead C), Michael Morley (The Dead C, Gate) or Stefan Neville (Pumice) some of his friends, with whom to spend some time, share an improvisation, or work on a record project.
[…]
For all of us who were around until the end, these notes and gritty vibrations sound even stranger. They resonate with the serenity and temperance with which he was able to reassure us even more than we were able to support him. They resonate with his curiosity and his ability to pick up significance in the detail of a sound, a sentence, or a landscape, against the vast inanity of the world. Thierry had dedicated a lot of his life, attention, and intelligence to music, but he knew, in the end, that music is not that important. Thierry had chosen music as a way of making his own way, building friendships, keeping away from the thickheadedness and lack of imagination of a failing capitalist society. Thierry had chosen guitar against the macho and egotistic postures, just to share his wonderment when a little (or a lot) of electric magic gets out of it. I believe he would have appreciated that some of his relation to life would be seen in his relation to the instrument.
Poroporoaki, Teremoana.
Pali Meursault
(Profile published in Revue & Corrigée #122, September 2022)
3.
Thierry loved New Zealand, and even seemed to find New Zealanders pretty agreeable. Although we first met in France, I'd seen him in NZ a couple of times, so when he suggested we use his summer 2020 visit to record some material it seemed like a nice plan. Of course I had no idea what was ahead. The recording was done in the new sleep-out/studio we had recently finished in the back yard, a simple process that took about an hour. Thierry had to get to grips with the amplifier I lent him, which was not quite what he was used to, but I thought he got some great sounds out of it in the end. After he left for the North Island, COVID suddenly became a massive problem, and he was very lucky to get home before we locked up the whole country for months. But then he got sick again with something much worse than COVID, and it turned out that these sessions were actually a memorial to his last visit to the Antipodes. An entirely fitting memorial to a great friend of New Zealand, and I'm proud to say, a friend of mine too.
Bruce Russell, Lyttelton, Easter 2023
18,00€
Out of stock
LP
Mark VERNON
“Call Back Carousel” [!!damaged cover!!]
Pochette abimée avec au minimum 2 coins pliés (emballage médiocre du label).
Damaged cover with at least 2 corners bumped / folded (poor packaging from the label).
***** “This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It’s not called the wheel, it’s called the carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.” (Don Draper) Call Back Carousel is an audio time-travelogue, a slideshow of the mind’s eye - projecting Kodachrome memories directly into the listener’s mind by means of sound alone. It is a way of travelling without ever having to leave the home. A vicarious vacation for the imagination. Pure audio escapism. Each episode is based on a found tape of a pre-recorded slideshow commentary. Most of these tapes were made by amateur tape recording enthusiasts and hobbyist photographers of the 60s and 70s. Their recorded commentaries would at one time have been used in conjunction with a sequence of 35mm slides but only the taped voices now remain. The recordings themselves come from Vernon’s own archive of found reel-to-reel tapes that he has collected over the past twenty years. Using these found slideshow commentaries as a framework, a series of musical soundscapes have been created to bring the absent images to life, activating the listeners’ imagination in the classic tradition of ‘cinema for the ears’. It’s a little like looking through a family photo album where only the hand written captions and moun1ng corners remain; the photographs themselves have all been removed. The evocative rattle and clack of the projector shuffles through different slides as the fragile voices of our tour guides accompany us on a sonic journey that fractures time - and through the cracks, the past bleeds through into our present.
Original price was: 23,00€.8,00€Current price is: 8,00€.
In stock
CD
NURSE WITH WOUND
“The Little Dipper Minus Two Plus (Echo Poeme Sequences)”
ICR is pleased to re-issue this long deleted release, now enhanced for CD in a gatefold ecopack.
This originally came out in 2005 on CDR, as a limited edition of only 200 copies by ICR and Klanggalerie, only available at the Vienna live shows featuring Steve Stapleton, Colin Potter, Andrew Liles, Matt Waldron and Diana Rogerson. The gigs were held on 6 & 7 May 2005 at The Anatomical Museum / Narrenturm, Vienna (Austria). Each concert was limited to 50 seats. Fun was had. Lab coats optional.
14,00€
In stock
CD
Daisuke SUZUKI
“D.D.D.”
‘D.D.D.’ is a field recording album recorded by Daisuke Suzuki and was originally released by Texas based IDEA in 2001 in an edition of 300 copies on LP.
Sometimes field recordings can be appreciated in relation to the conceptual art form, or as an on-site sound study and documentation of a very specific phenomena. However, Daisuke had no concept of the idea of building sonic panoramas and was specifically only concerned with gathering lots of intriguing sound matter for his personal listening.
‘D.D.D.’ was mastered by Gary Todd, who was the founder of the Cortical Foundation. Gary and Daisuke became good friends when Gary visited Japan as Red Crayola live sound engineer in the late 1990s and they developed a mutual trust with each other after that.
Sadly in September 2001, Gary fell from his apartment balcony, which left him hospitalized ever since. On June 25, 2022 Gary passed away at the age of 59.
Daisuke said, “Gary was always generous and had a kind heart. He gave me a lot of friendship and warmth. I’ve decided to re-issue 'D.D.D.' to keep him in memory and heart.”
The CD includes an expanded version of ‘Cricket Voice’ which did not appear on the original IDEA LP release.
The CD is in edition 200 copies and is presented in a facsimile card sleeve of the original release, newly designed by Andrew Chalk.
11,50€
In stock
CD
Daisuke SUZUKI & Andrew CHALK
“Drifting”
A collaboration does not mean you have to share everything or to do each and every activity together as a team. If your words or sounds inspire someone to open a challenge to something new,or open the door of possibilities-you can call it collaboration.
Your personally recorded sounds never fail to reveal your true face and the sounds always speak more than words can.
‘Drifting’ is the very first collaboration between Andrew Chalk and Daisuke Suzuki, which has remained unsurfaced since then-their private recording in 1996. In early 1996 Daisuke sent Andrew a DAT tape which included some unedited pieces that he recorded with found objects in his garden.
Those fragments of recordings inspired Andrew to make a spontaneous recording and he made a live mix directly to cassette recorder with his instinct and archaic vision. ‘Drifting’ is a kind of archaic low-fi recording, but it has great atmosphere and perfect unison in texture.
‘Drifting’ was also a prelude to their long-term collaborations and the beginning of the change of direction in Andrew’s approach to music.
Remastered by Denis Blackham in 2023, and CD comes with glossy card sleeve in edition 300.
11,50€
Out of stock
2 CD
COMPILATION
“Fluxus & NeoFluxus: Stolen Symphony (Part I)”
Double-CD version comes in digipack; includes 72-page booklet.
All in all, there are more than 50 pieces, new and old, live and studio, finished pieces and scores to be performed, acoustic and classical, solos and pieces for ensemble, using classical and special instruments. This Fluxus edition features (in alphabetical order): Eric Andersen, Ay-O, George Brecht, John Cage, Giancarlo Cardini, Giuseppe Chiari, Henning Christiansen, Philip Corner, Öyvind Fahlström, Ken Friedman, Sten Hanson, Geoffrey Hendricks, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Joe Jones, Bengt af Klintberg, Milan Knízák, Alison Knowles, Larry Miller, George Maciunas, Sara Miyamoto, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Opening Performance Orchestra, Benjamin Patterson, Josef Anton Riedl, Terry Riley, Takako Saito, Tomas Schmit, Dieter Schnebel, Mieko Shiomi, Yasunao Tone, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, and La Monte Young. The musicians and performers Anna Clementi, Agnese Toniutti, Deborah Walker, Werner Durand, Luciano Chessa, Miroslav Beinhauer, Petr Bakla, Nicolas Horvath, Petr Ferenc, and Premysl Ondra have played, performed and declaimed the Fluxus pieces, Arditti Quartet and S.E.M. Ensemble provided one piece from their archives. Milan Knízák, Petr Rezek, Petr Kotík, Olaf Hanel, Eric Andersen, Per Brunskog, Peter van der Meijden, Pavlína Morganová, Natasha Lushetich, Joseph Nechvatal, Natilee Harren, Martin Patrick, Diedrich Diederichsen, Christopher M. Reeves, and Hubertus von Amelunxen have written Fluxus-themed texts. Archivio Conz in Berlin provided access to their extensive Fluxus archives and Edizioni Conz provided coproduction. Ursula and René Block made possible the realization of John Cage's historical composition "Rozart Mix" from the Edition Block archive. The photographic material comes from Marie Knízáková and Milan Knízák's private archive, the German photographer Wolfgang Träger, Archivio Conz's Fluxus archive and Opening Performance Orchestra's digital archive. The cover themes are paintings by Milan Knízák, while the graphic design is the work of Jaroslav Buzek.
20,00€
In stock
2 LP book
COMPILATION
“Fluxus & NeoFluxus: Stolen Symphony (Part I)”
Double LP version. Gatefold sleeve; includes 24-page large booklet. All in all, there are more than 50 pieces, new and old, live and studio, finished pieces and scores to be performed, acoustic and classical, solos and pieces for ensemble, using classical and special instruments. This Fluxus edition features (in alphabetical order): Eric Andersen, Ay-O, George Brecht, John Cage, Giancarlo Cardini, Giuseppe Chiari, Henning Christiansen, Philip Corner, Öyvind Fahlström, Ken Friedman, Sten Hanson, Geoffrey Hendricks, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Joe Jones, Bengt af Klintberg, Milan Knízák, Alison Knowles, Larry Miller, George Maciunas, Sara Miyamoto, Nam June Paik, Yoko Ono, Opening Performance Orchestra, Benjamin Patterson, Josef Anton Riedl, Terry Riley, Takako Saito, Tomas Schmit, Dieter Schnebel, Mieko Shiomi, Yasunao Tone, Ben Vautier, Yoshi Wada, and La Monte Young. The musicians and performers Anna Clementi, Agnese Toniutti, Deborah Walker, Werner Durand, Luciano Chessa, Miroslav Beinhauer, Petr Bakla, Nicolas Horvath, Petr Ferenc, and Premysl Ondra have played, performed and declaimed the Fluxus pieces, Arditti Quartet and S.E.M. Ensemble provided one piece from their archives. Milan Knízák, Petr Rezek, Petr Kotík, Olaf Hanel, Eric Andersen, Per Brunskog, Peter van der Meijden, Pavlína Morganová, Natasha Lushetich, Joseph Nechvatal, Natilee Harren, Martin Patrick, Diedrich Diederichsen, Christopher M. Reeves, and Hubertus von Amelunxen have written Fluxus-themed texts. Archivio Conz in Berlin provided access to their extensive Fluxus archives and Edizioni Conz provided coproduction. Ursula and René Block made possible the realization of John Cage's historical composition "Rozart Mix" from the Edition Block archive. The photographic material comes from Marie Knízáková and Milan Knízák's private archive, the German photographer Wolfgang Träger, Archivio Conz's Fluxus archive and Opening Performance Orchestra's digital archive. The cover themes are paintings by Milan Knízák, while the graphic design is the work of Jaroslav Buzek.
27,00€
In stock
LP
HASTINGS OF MALAWI
“Choreological Exchanges”
Recorded at the height of the global pandemic, and at a time when remote communication was becoming increasingly prevalent, Choreological Exchanges is part of Hastings Of Malawi's continuing investigations into the medium of communication itself. Prior to telephony becoming digital, all phone calls were routed through mechanical telephone exchanges, and the majority of the sounds on side one are the sounds of these exchanges and some of the voices of the engineers who worked with them. Hastings Of Malawi make strange records and this one is no exception although it has a more linear narrative structure in opposition to what critics have described as their Dadaist approach. Their records certainly resist genre classification and do not really fall into the category of music. Hastings Of Malawi have themselves described previous records as films without light, radio plays and as poems. This one is a dance -- a dance that takes place within the chain, or pipe, that is brain -- mouth -- telephone -- telephone exchange -- telephone -- ear -- brain.
16,00€
In stock
LP
THE DWARFS OF EAST AGOUZA
“High Tide in the Lowlands”
Hailing from the Agouza district of Cairo, Egypt, this brilliant trio consists of Alan Bishop (acoustic bass, vocals, alto sax), Maurice Louca (keyboards, drum machine), and Sam Shalabi (electric guitar). Born in 2012 when the three were living in the same apartment building in Cairo's Agouza district, the trio's instrumental improvisation-based explorations are propelled by Louca's North African percussion loops and shimmering keys, Shalabi's West African tinged free jazz guitar and grounded by Bishop's driving Krautrock-style acoustic bass. High Tide in the Lowlands was recorded in Brussels at Les Ateliers Claus on September 5, 2017 and is quite an intense experience. Most performances and recording sessions are improvised and this set is no different and even though the group opened the show with "Baka of the Future" from their first album Bes, it is almost unrecognizable and everything the trio plays is continually morphing into the next unknown idea. As the sound, energy, and instantaneous composition flows, the trance is growing and growing, ranging from raw shapeshifting "no (un)wave", free jazz, traditional Arabic, and modern experimental explorations to a concrete mystic trip from a universe expanding and contracting constantly. This is earth interrogating the sky, the sky rejoining the earth, an unknown and unwritten cosmogony.
Maurice Louca is an Egyptian musician and composer born in Cairo where he lives and works. As well as being the co-founder of the bands Bikya, Alif, and Lekhfa, Louca lends his sound to numerous other projects, composing for theatre, film, dance and contemporary art. Previous releases on Sub Rosa: Elephantine (SR 474LP), Saet El-Hazz (SR 519LP). Alan Bishop is a founding member of Phoenix/Seattle avant-garde trio Sun City Girls, who, for 27 years, explored the outer reaches of improvisation and composition (from free jazz/post rock psychedelic, and sound collage to outernational Arabic and Asian inspired folk music). As founder of the Sublime Frequencies record label, Bishop has released over 100 records, introducing previously ignored musical genres from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Sam Shalabi is a prolific Egyptian-Canadian composer and improviser living between Montreal, Quebec and Cairo, Egypt. As the founder of Land of Kush, Shalabi Effect, and many other projects, he began with punk rock in the late '70s and his work has evolved into a fusion of experimental music that incorporates modern/traditional Arabic, shaabi, noise, and classical music with spoken word, free improvisation and jazz.
16,00€
In stock
2 LP
DEDALUS ENSEMBLE
“Brian Eno Performed by Dedalus Ensemble”
Double LP version. With Discreet Music (1975), Music for Airports (1978), and Thursday Afternoon (1985), Brian Eno invented a new music genre, ambient music, which he defined as "able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable as it is interesting." These versions performed and arranged by Dedalus Ensemble, according to the musicians and the critics who listened to it, goes beyond what you expect from it. A mental base that takes you far away. One of the only music without beginning or end in which we want to stay as long as possible.
Dedalus Ensemble: Founded in 1996 by Didier Aschour, Dedalus is a contemporary music ensemble based in Toulouse. Its repertoire includes works by classics of minimalism: Christian Wolff, Phill Niblock, Frederic Rzewski, Tom Johnson, Moondog, or Philip Glass. Personnel: Didier Aschour - guitar, arrangements and artistic direction; Denis Chouillet - piano; Amélie Berson - flute; Fabrice Villard - clarinet; Pierre-Stéphane Meugé - saxophone; Christian Pruvost - trumpet; Thierry Madiot - trombone; Silvia Tarozzi - violin; Cyprien Busolini - viola; Deborah Walker - cello; Eric Chalan - double bass, vibraphone.
Inspired by Erik Satie's furniture music, Cage's indeterminacy and La Monte Young's drones, Eno's series of compositions were based on strict formal protocols bringing the listener into an enthralling world of sounds. Brian Eno was widely seen as a pioneering and influential figure of popular music and worked with icons of pop culture such as David Bowie, U2, etc.
20,00€
In stock
LP
PUCE MOMENT
“Epic Ellipses”
Puce Moment is part of the French contemporary music scene. Their music is climatic, often inhabited by a strong emotional power. A procession of harmonic structures organized in a ritual way, sometimes close to trance. It can be written or improvised, vocal or instrumental. The electronic and electroacoustic arrangements summon new spaces and abstract landscapes, which can go from the purest sound to the rawest distortions. Vast, slower, deeper -- distant echoes of half-faded things -- and when you are lost, voices appear. Voices whose only reference would be the timeless SeeFeel. Nicolas Devos and Pénélope Michel are visual and sound artists, one trained at the Beaux-Arts and the Fresnoy studio national des arts contemporains and the other a classically trained cellist, singer, and multi-instrumentalist. They created Puce Moment, envisaged as a sound research laboratory open to experimentation, to multi-disciplinary encounters and to decompartmentalization. Their work is akin to a fictional ethnology expressed through protean projects and mutant visual, sound and musical creations. Epic Ellipses is their fourth album. They have composed the original soundtracks of more than a dozen dance performance, fiction or documentary films, virtual reality in variable formats (Christian Rizzo, Mylène Benoit, Vania Vaneau, Benjamin Nuel, Laurent Pernot, Carolina Gonçalves). Or in the form of film-concerts including David Lynch's cult film Eraserhead with which they have toured intensively since 2012 in France and Europe, and since 2019 Koyaanisqatsi, the cult experimental documentary by Godfrey Reggio.
16,00€
In stock
CD
BRUME
“A Treatise On Ethnography”
Brume/C Renou: Analog & digital electronics, percussion, metal, DIY wind instruments, amputated electric guitar, acoustic guitar, voice, electronic toys, tape (reel to reel & cassette), field recording, 60's radio, tv, effects, etc... + mix.
11,00€
In stock
CD
Aliénor GOLVET
“Point, Line, Surface”
PhD student at Ircam-STMS lab in the {Sound, Music, Movement} Interaction (ISMM) team under the supervision of Frédéric Bevilacqua and Benjamin Matuszeswski.
"My music is an exploration of sterility, mundanity and stillness interpreted through personal feelings and subjective experience.
My composition process is intuitive and personal. The recordings I use are of the following nature : souvenirs of lost moments, recordings of natural and urban empty spaces, microphone and object manipulation, deformed voices, non-expertly played instruments, resonances."
11,00€
In stock
2 LP
Julius EASTMAN
“Femenine”
In 2016, frozen reeds published the première release of Julius Eastman’s Femenine, for chamber ensemble. Laying unheard for decades prior, the release documented a 1974 performance by the S.E.M. Ensemble with the composer himself on piano.
It is now available on vinyl for the first time, in a revelatory new remaster by Jim O’Rourke.
The first release of Femenine served as the catalyst that propelled Eastman’s music into the mainstream. Articles on Eastman’s music and its immediate disruptive impact on the classical canon began to appear in every major news organ in the English-speaking world and beyond. His music began to be programmed in major concerts and festivals, several of these entirely themed around his life and work. New recordings sprang up from a fresh generation of musicians engaging with his ideas and interpreting them for a modern audience hungry to hear more.
But the raw, emotionally cascading spirit of the original performance continues to inspire listeners. Joyous, insistent, and immersive, Femenine bathes the listener in surges of tonal colour from intertwining winds, piano, violin, pitched percussion, synthesizer and – uniquely – the composer’s own invention of mechanised sleigh bells, which provide the 72-minute piece with its characteristic pulse.
Femenine was recorded live by Steve Cellum – co-producer of Arthur Russell’s World of Echo – and the new vinyl reissue has been remastered from the original high-definition tape transfer by Jim O’Rourke at his Steamroom studio in the Japanese mountains.
Illuminating sleeve notes are provided by composer and author Mary Jane Leach, key figure of the Eastman revival and co-editor of the Gay Guerrilla collection of essays on his life and music.
35,00€
In stock
2 CD
Eliane RADIGUE
“Naldjorlak”
Saltern presents a thrilling new live recording of Naldjorlak for solo cello, composer Éliane Radigue's first piece for an acoustic instrument, paired with a remastered version of the long out-of-print, original 2006 recording. Composed in 2005 in close collaboration with cellist Charles Curtis, Naldjorlak marked a striking shift in the music of Radigue, who has since composed exclusively for instrumentalists with her celebrated Occam series. This double-CD album brings together two complete performances by Curtis, recorded nearly 15 years apart (Paris in 2006 and Los Angeles in 2020), drawing attention to the evolution of the piece and to its inherent mutability. The sound and spirit of Naldjorlak are centered around the re-tuning of the entire cello to the wolf tone, a uniquely unstable frequency, creating a haunting, almost feedback-like resonance within the instrument itself. Mastered by Stephan Mathieu with custom packaging and screen printing by Alan Sherry. Includes extensive liner notes by Gascia Ouzounian, Radigue, and Curtis, and a reproduction of Radigue's never-before published original drawing of Naldjorlak.
From Gascia Ouzounian's liner notes: "Even as it expands conceptions of what sound is, and thus what music can be, to understand Naldjorlak only as music would be to limit its scope. It is music, but it is also physics and philosophy. Naldjorlak is a detailed investigation of the physical properties of resonating bodies and dynamic systems; it is a meditation on the condition of instability; it is a metaphysics of chaos and uncertainty."
21,00€
In stock
LP
Arthur PETRONIO
“Arthur Petronio”
Arthur Petronio:
Born Switzerland 1897.
French-Italian musician, poet and painter.
Lived in Belgium and The Netherlands between 1910 and 1924 and since then in France.
Young violin virtuoso studying with Belgian master violinist Eugène Ysaÿe.
Played solo violin for Belgian King Leopold II, at the age of 9.
Attracted to the avant-garde and visionary ideas of Gesamtkunstwerk.
Develops and presents his “Verbophonie” in 1919, integrating sound poetry into regular music scores.
Friend with Kandinsky, Mondrian, Cocteau and Picasso.
Published several avant-garde journals and poetry books with participation of like minded artists.
Wrote many scores for solo instruments, small ensembles, orchestral works, opera,…
Met Henri Chopin in 1950 and extended his musical ideas with new possibilities of tape composition.
His one and only LP, now reissued by Metaphon, was originally published by the Belgian Igloo label in 1979.
An extravagant DIY montage of musique concrète and sound poetry.
In addition to Petronio’s voice several female readers/performers contribute to this theatre of voices as guest vocalists.
An album as unusual as his lifecycle.
25,00€
Out of stock
LP
SISTER IODINE
“Hollozone”
Paris Noise chiefs, Sister Iodine, return with "Hollozone". Their seventhalbum and second on Nashazphone following the 2018's Double Album, "Venom".
Erik Minkkinen, Lionel Fernandez, and Nicolas Mazet have represented the cutting edge and vanguard of French Noise since the nineties and yet remain as radical and uncompromisingas ever. With "Hollozone", the group manages to confirm the sound and spirit intensity which perfectly embodies their unique world of controlled chaos.
It is with the advent of the 21st century -more than ever -that the decisive path of Sister Iodine has taken a fascinating route.From their debut album, ADN115, released in 1994 which was strongly influenced by the original New York No Wave scene (Mars,DNA, Red Transistor) to their more recent works which have beenaugmented by "newer poisons" such as Black Metal, or the mostabrasive end of Industrial Music and Power Electronics, or Experimental Electronics (Editions Mego has reissued anextended version of "Flame Desastre" on CD), the band has managed to survive through the decades,from theinhospitable French squats of the nineties to nowadays’ established venues and proper tours. Today, the band’s music has changed recipients and has attracted younger generations with their organized radioactive chaos while never conceding anything fromtheir initial intensity. Over the years, Sister Iodine wouldhave also created their own idiosyncratic language, for which soundexploration matters and pure beauty seem to count as much as pure explosive ferocity, while intense violence and energy getsdeployed in live shows.
The last few years witnessed an increasing number of collaborations such as the recent sessions with Meyhna'ch (Mütiilation) orthe ones with Masaya Nakahara (Violent Onsen Geisha / Hair Stylistics). "Hollozone" offers a track featuring the vocalcontribution of Stephen Bessac, the deviant front manof the cult French hardcore band Kickback. Sister Iodine produces today a music that is actually unique and unheard anywhere else. One of eternal youth and audacity.
24,00€
In stock
LP
Andrea BORGHI
“Palsecam”
True to form, Borghi works directly with VHS tapes and the apparatus that plays them, manipulating the exposed mechanisms with the care and curiosity of a dedicated scientist. Drawing from these manual manipulations, Borghi's experiments combine mechanical sounds with mangled tape samples to inspire a mechanised nostalgia inseparably hybridised with human trace. Unlike others who work with old film, he resists the eerie to focus on the intricate crunch and buzz, an electro-acoustic soundscape tangentially related to the field recordings. By highlighting the precise moment that recorded media becomes perceived, a restless, shifting mass of both familiar and unrecognisable sounds results in a unique form of otic chiaroscuro. The result is a complication of inside and outside sounds: distant, gesturing snippets of semi-remembered, half-imagined films compete with TV cathode burn, tracking stutters, mechanical interference, and vérité whirrs and clicks that could only come from that original reproducer of dreams, the VHS player. With Palsecam Borghi gives dignity to an often maligned format, in an engaging mélange that represents the recovery of an object discarded as an objet d'art.
Composed and recorded by Andrea Borghi : VHS, contact microphones, computer.
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi. Lacquer cut by Kassian Troyer at D&M, Berlin.
20,00€
In stock
LP
Angélica CASTELLÓ
“Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin”
Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin (Fourteen Reflections On The End) originated from an installation exhibited at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca, Mexico, in 2019. Fourteen magnetic bodies of tape that dialogued with the fourteen pieces of electroacoustic music now contained in this album composed from the sound anthology of Angélica Castelló. Thus, Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin is a complex piece consisting of multiple parts that, although articulated with each other, hold a life of their own.
Like every body, these have a unique history made up of mixed fragments spun by Angélica, ranging from field recordings, references, and self-references to previous pieces, experiences, and voice recordings made specifically for these compositions re-recorded in various formats, from lo to high fidelity, analog and digital, composed, decomposed and recomposed (Castelló, A., 2019). Likewise, as any body, they also reflect on their end, whether absolute or temporal, of the many ways of being finite and of saying goodbye.
During the Catorce reflexiones sobre el fin, Castelló takes you on a journey that is difficult to locate. An ethereal space between shattered glass, stridulation of cicadas, war drums, murmurs in French, Italian maledictions, and soft recitations in Spanish. From uproar to solace, all wrapped in a soft abstraction that only allows access to the subtle whisper of these expressions. A gesture between invitation and sharing because who does not recognize oneself in this emotional storm?
20,00€
In stock
CD
Francis PLAGNE & Andrew CHALK
“The Painter’s Family”
A beautiful collection of duets, melodic & drifting. An escape......
Edition of 300, comes in a mini handmade gatefold jacket with obi.
Recorded 2008-2016 and originally released on cassette in 2018.
The Painter’s Family is the first duo release from Andrew Chalk and Francis Plagne, recorded intermittently, both together and apart, over eight years, in Hull, Melbourne and various places in Japan. Eight pages from the sketchbook, sequenced into two languorous side-long suites.
“He tried by every means to come close to nature, lying in the fields before daybreak and until nightfall in order to learn to represent very exactly the red morning sky of sunrise, sunset and the evening hours”
Mastered by Joe Talia.
14,00€
In stock
CD
Jean Noël REBILLY & Andrew CHALK
“Tsilla”
Somewhat different to the other recent releases involving Andrew, this music on this collaboration has a very different atmosphere. Somewhat mysterious & brooding, with a wide palette of electronic & acoustic instruments.
From the label : “On Tsilla, Jean-Noël Rebilly and Andrew Chalk pay homage to the late French writer and engraver Cécile Reims. While she may be best known as interpretative engraver for surrealist artist Hans Bellmer, and she also worked with Leonor Fini and briefly for Salvador Dali, Reims’ most powerful and enduring works were made either in collaboration with her husband, the writer and artist Fred Deux (who signed their collaborative work “cf deux”), or by herself. Later works by Reims, like the L’Elan Vitale suite, or the Histoires Naturelles series, manifest denuded, obliterated landscapes; spiralling abstractions; engravings that shiver with an unearthly radiance, where etchings of great intricacy hint at intimacy and the velocity of rapture, before opening out to aching empty spaces. The music on Tsilla is similarly evocative, a tender weaving of emotional complexity carved with the hand-held and simple tools of artisans. Much like Reims, Rebilly and Chalk enact a similar transfiguration of base materials. For Reims, natural order is made “more sinuous and curious through the rounded flow of her graver,” Kate McCrickard once noted. For Rebilly and Chalk, these seven pieces, cast under the shadow of a great artist, inhabit that sinuousness, and tease out the eternal flow of tone.” -Jon Dale
With a beautiful gatefold sleeve,handmade by Andrew, an edtion of 300.
Mastered by Dennis Blackham
14,00€
In stock
CD
Andrew CHALK
“Dreams: Scenes I – XV”
Another fine album from Andrew, in a similar vein to his recent ICR CD 'The End Times'.
Edition of 300, comes in a mini handmade gatefold jacket.
Dreams, subtitled Scenes I-XV, captures imaginary scenes and sequenced into a full album of 52 minutes length at Impression Lointaine.
Dreams being archaic and unpredictable in its composition, such as dreams themselves that make little sense upon waking and assembled using time limited constraints. And while immersed, and in privacy, form a thread of personal communication like a nostalgic memory-a painting of which we inhabit ourselves.
14,00€
In stock
LP
Kevin DRUMM
“Battering Rams”
From the viscerally punishing and nerve wrecking, to the wistfully sublime, Kevin Drumm ‘s work often yield a ferocious intensity through the timbres of minute details. Now, throughout this series of archival works dating from 2000 to 2022, his mastery is once again on full display.
On »Battering Rams«, sinister forces interlope with sanguine glimmers of respite and contemplation, while recurring drones ceaselessly crescendo to near paralysing effect, only for the albums final moments to offer a lofty reprise of boundless oscillation, dispelling all the pent up tension into a sanguine state of bliss. Once again underpinning Drums’ genius of turning apparently trivial hums into elongated microtonal worlds that stay etched deeply in your conscious, often long after the works final resonances have already subsided.
22,50€
Out of stock
LP
Dafne VICENTE-SANDOVAL / Lars Petter HAGEN
“Minos Circuit / Transfiguration 4”
DAFNE VICENTE-SANDOVAL - MINOS CIRCUIT (2021)
Minos Circuit is the resonance of a double exploration, that of an instrument, the bassoon - an instrument dear to Dafne Vicente-Sandoval - and that of a listening, of a gaze, almost. The first exploration deconstructs the instrument, tearing it apart, reducing it to an archipelago of sound bodies stimulated by an electro-acoustic device that generates feedback and infiltrates each part of the bassoon, in order to carry out a methodical, systematic examination. The second exploration is the inner one of attention and listening, the one that measures, at each moment, the necessity or not of an intervention in the very act of the musical work, of this subtle balance that is established between composition and observation, between action and contemplation.
LARS PETTER HAGEN - TRANSFIGURATION 4 (2018)
Both a “meditation on musical ruins” and “a study of the material of Richard Strauss’s Metamorphoses”, Transfiguration 4 works on the musical fragment as an expressive and poetic possibility that can be deployed below or beyond simple musical syntax, a syntax that is still too often equated with music itself. What Lars Petter Hagen highlights in this remarkable work is that the power of music lies at its fringes, that is, at the edge of its own disappearance. Transfiguration 4 floats in a particularly moving way in these troubled lands, where nothing is ever resolved, and where everything, however, is suspended, like a stream of blurred memories that memory would summon to form an intuition. A musical intuition.
21,00€
Out of stock
LP
Eve ABOULKHEIR / Lasse MARHAUG
“22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream / How to Avoid Ants”
EVE ABOULKHEIR - 22/12/2017 GUILIN SYNTHETIC DAYDREAM (2021)
22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream is a perceptual trap. Inspired by an experience of intense perceptive disorientation while crossing a market in China, Eve Aboulkheir reinstantiates, in the field of sounds, the swirling and anamorphic universe of thwarted perceptions, surrounding multitudes and shifted sensations. She thus constructs a dreamlike and artificial universe, suspended and hyperactive, which is both an electronic vortex sucking us in and a mechanical ballet developing its arabesques around us, caught and fascinated by these volutes of sound that fracture like a kaleidoscope in which our eyes-ears are immersed. 22/12/2017 Guilin Synthetic Daydream approaches the musical form in the most direct way possible, i.e. through its effects and its empire on our sensorium.
LASSE MARHAUG - HOW TO AVOID ANTS (2020)
Using concrète techniques to collect, transform and assemble sounds of various origins (sounds of tree branches, leaves, but also guitars or synthesizers), Lasse Marhaug elaborates a dense and subterranean work, which unfolds through the multiple dimensions induced by the great diversity of its sound material. There is a labyrinthine feeling in this work, a feeling that is better understood when the inspiration for the title of the piece How to avoid ants is revealed, a very practical and then poetic undertaking, that of avoiding the anthills lining the path to the forest camp in the kindergarten to which his little girl, who was then frightened of insects, was going. It is such an activity of circumvention, diversion and byways that Lasse Marhaug uses to create an exploratory and evasive music.
21,00€
In stock
LP
Jan JELINEK
“SEASCAPE – polyptych”
One of the most notorious hatemongers in movie history is Captain Ahab from John Huston’s 1956 classic Moby Dick. His manic monologues cast a spell on generations of viewers. Berlin based musician and sound artist Jan Jelinek has now turned the voice of Ahab into a musical instrument.
Faitiche presents Jan Jelinek's soundtrack for SEASCAPE – polyptych, an audio-visual software developed in collaboration with Canadian new media artist Clive Holden in 2022.
SEASCAPE – polyptych is based on image and acoustic source material from Moby Dick. While Holden works on manipulating film sequences, the voice of Ahab plays a central role in Jan Jelinek’s soundtrack. The dynamic volume and tone of the captain's speech control a synthesizer system that turns Ahabs voice into ten abstract soundscapes.
In this production the voice gives the impulse and controls things but is not the sound of spoken word itself that we hear. Only occasionally can snippets of speech be heard so that syllables or sounds are recognisable. Instead we hear compositions made of hissing, soundscapes and eruptive sounds. The atmosphere is dark and sinister. Still every piece has a clear sonic structure and follows an understandable dramatic composition. This music is abstract but not overwhelming. Quite the opposite, SEASCAPE – polyptych is an invitation to listeners to let themselves be carried by the stream of sonic events. Although part of a media art work, the soundtrack can be enjoyed without any of this connecting superstructure. It works with no previous knowledge. But what happens when one does know that it’s the sonic waves of a human voice that is controlling a network of synthesizers?
If you want to hear Ahab, you will hear a choir of Ahabs in every piece of sound. The subliminal threatening as well as the conjuring Ahab. Finally the Ahab who whips up his crew and tears them with him into their downfall. The majestic „on the quay now, waiting and watching“, the oppressive “drawn towards the whirlpools center” - they are all music as well as sonic discourse.
23,50€
In stock
LP
MURMER
“Tether”
Murmer is the long-standing project for Estonian field recordist and composer Patrick McGinley, and in Tether, The Helen Scarsdale Agency welcomes Murmer back to our roster, over a decade since he graced us with his last production for the Agency. His field recordings often center upon the amplification and activation of resonance from a particular space, landscape, or object. Such sounds emerge from a condition as begin fleeting, inconsequential, or ephemeral and explode into that which alien, sublime, and profound. Here lies the tremendous prowess of the contact microphone, as wielded by an accomplished musician! The source material cited by McGinley includes cables, fences, wires, and vents.
There is a heft to many of these sounds as heard throughout all of "Taevast" with deep throbbing pulsations from arctic wind generating subharmonic patterns upon thick high-tension wires. Elsewhere the subtle dissonance from a rasping cooling fan blooms into a brooding ambience that is sublimely rich in its metallic timbres and complex reverberations. McGingley has long been an exemplary artist in the field of phonography even as he is less prolific than others. On Tether, he has produced a majestic if occasionally foreboding work on par with the mythic wire recordings of Alan Lamb, Jacob Kirkegaard's haunted resonance from Chernobyl, and much of the Touch catalogue for that matter!
26,00€
In stock
LP
Giuseppe IELASI
“Down On Darkened Meetings”
Black Truffle is pleased to announce Down On Darkened Meetings, the first solo release on the label from the quietly prolific Giuseppe Ielasi. Recorded at Ielasi’s studio in Monza outside of Milan over two days in February 2022, the seven pieces presented here continue the renewed exploration of the guitar that marks much of his solo work over the last few years. Emerging in the late 1990s as an improviser working primarily with prepared acoustic and electric guitars, the instrument became less prominent in his work over the next decade, ceding to loop-based constructs that would eventually split into abstracted takes on club music and hip-hop (including his work as Inventing Masks), on the one hand, and spectral electroacoustic explorations (such as the stunning triple disc 3 pauses), on the other. Returning to the guitar in recent years, he has approached the instrument as a source of shimmering metallic glissandi (Five Wooden Frames) or as the vehicle of elegiac double-tracked lines that feel almost like Frisell playing Feldman (The Prospect). Here the focus is on electric guitar filtered, looped, and splayed out into fields of irregular echoes through a bank of pedals.
Like many of Ielasi’s releases, Down On Darkened Meetings is structured as a set of short untitled pieces (here ranging between two and six minutes in length) that single-mindedly explore a single instrument or source throughout. The opening track immediately introduced the distinctive timbral world of fizzing, heavily filtered tones, chiming harmonics, and woozy looping bass figures inhabited throughout. At points it becomes near impossible to trace these sounds to the strings of an electric guitar; at others, as on the final two pieces, the instrument is unmistakable, as Ielasi builds up his shifting loops from snatches of almost unintentional sounding half-playing that give these closing tracks a hushed, private atmosphere reminiscent of Tolerance’s Anonym. While the repeating chords and hanging melodic figures present on many tracks call to mind earlier Ielasi classics like Gesine and Untitled, here the music feels less meticulously constructed than played: Ielasi’s lyrical guitar lines obscured by a battery of effects at times come across like a dilated take on the outer-fringe fretwork of improvisers like Henry Kaiser and Raymond Boni, and the muddy, asynchronous fields of pops and hiss at times wander into areas reminiscent of the hand-played dub techno of Vladislav Delay’s Multila.
Like much of Ielasi’s work in recent years, these seven pieces perform a delicate balancing act: between abstraction and immediacy, austerity and abundance. Imbued with Ielasi’s distinctive lightness of touch, considered approach to pacing, and subtly psychedelic approach to the stereo field, Down on Darkened Meetings is a major new work from a quiet master of contemporary experimental music.
25,00€
In stock
LP
Richard YOUNGS
“Modern Sorrow”
The endlessly prolific and unpredictable Richard Youngs returns to Black Truffle with Modern Sorrow. As any Youngs fan knows, one of the great pleasures of following his career comes from not being able to predict what the next entry in his inexhaustible string of releases will bring: Unaccompanied voice? Country songs? Shakuhachi? Guitar pieces played with his feet? Shredding fuzz bass over the top of hyper-speed distorted drum machine beats? Continuing in the grand Youngs tradition of exploring new techniques, instrumentation and approaches while bringing to all of them his idiosyncratic touch, Modern Sorrow serves up two sides of twistedly elegiac, radically stark takes on contemporary pop production. The side-long title track is built from a piano sample, synthetic bass notes and organ swells, and an iterative blurt that seems to have wandered out of a 90s jungle track. Eventually joined by a shuffling drum machine, the track moves very slowly through a series of chords, each delayed long enough that its arrival comes as a major event. Over the top, Youngs’ heavily pitch-corrected voice is heard. The processing paints his signature wandering melodic improvisations with shades of contemporary R&B; at the same time, it cuts the natural swoops and glides of Youngs’ melodies into rapid microtonal trills, giving his voice a quavering, middle eastern feel. Unfolding languorously over more than 17 minutes, the piece’s final minutes make room for an extended drumless coda, returning to the stark palette of its opening moments. On the second side, the two parts of ‘Benevolence’ push this minimalism ever further, its first half consisting of nothing more than a remarkably slow drum machine hit, bass-heavy chords and pitch-corrected voice, here so heavily processed that it starts to resemble a shawn solo. In its second part, the harmonic foundation drops out from under the piece while two more voices join; at some moments the voices pause, leaving nothing more than isolated, metronomic drum hits. Though Youngs has explored the sound worlds associated with dance music and contemporary pop in previous work, here these elements are radically reduced, foregrounding a meditative bed of silence with a boldness equal to any more academically inclined contemporary composer. Embracing the accessible digital tools of contemporary music production just as at another moment he would pick up a kazoo, like much of Youngs’ work Modern Sorrow uses simple DIY tools to generous ends, producing formally radical music that remains both free from pretension and deeply moving.
25,00€