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Not only is Wendy Carlos a pioneer of electornic music as we now know & love it. Her transformation from Walter to Wendy led to a new beginning in music making for Carlos. No longer was there just an academic and novelty approached to a new form of music(see "Switched On Bach"), but her music started to take a much more intense and focused eye. Haunting sounds, creepy melodies, something bubbling under the surface. Her work is most heard in film scores she has done over the last few decades..with this, her score for A Clockwork Orange being a seminal moment and a great place to start the voyage into the magical mystery of Wendy Carlos.
One of the most engaging pioneers of electronic music Wendy (formely Walter) Carlos has made some of the most haunting and chilling sounds over the last several decades. The collaboration with filmakers was a very natural progression for Carlos as her sounds so perfectly match the images of equally creative and twisted filmmakers like Stanley Kubrick for whom she scored both The Shining and A Clockwork Orange. This new compilation of her lost scores contains the stunning sounds she crafted for The Shining which never made it to album form before as well as tracks from A Clockwork Orange that were not included on that soundtrack. Dark electronic soundscapes years before labels like Scape or Schematic even existed. The last few tracks are devoted to her score work for several UNICEF films..those don't quite do it for us but wow how much the first 25 tracks from Kubrick's films sure do. Totally creepy and trailblazing.
A Pauline Oliveros project, with Peter Bode and Andrew Deutsch. For this release, they've taken stuff from the technical notebooks of electronic instrument pioneer Harald Bode (Peter's dad?) and with the use of the Bode Vocoder have made his writing part of their improvised drone composition. Other elements include Harald's demo tapes, Oliveros' "Difference Box" device, and Deutsch's synthesizer.
A mind-bending Italian library obscurity gets a nice reissue thanks to Penny Records. Daniela Casa may not be as well known as Ennio Morricone, Egisto Macchi, or Alessandro Alessandroni, but his 1970 concept album Societa Malata (The Sick Society) is one of the strangest psych "soundtracks" we have heard. It begins very dreamy, with hypnotic vibes and woodwinds lulling us into a restless sleep state, where we are introduced to the acid guitar grooves, loping bass rhythms and bongos that seem to anchor the majority of the record as we traverse otherworldly landscapes tinged with paranoia, seduction and uncertainty. Moogy flourishes and hectic rhythms add to the fever dream feel. With piano and echoing metallic percussion highlighting the noirish vibe, but it's not all terror. "Esoda" carries a wondering pastoral vibe, even if it does have a creepy tinge, but not as creepy as a track like "Occultismo" with its chorus of ghostly voices, or the final track, "Dittatura", a beautifully doomed march to destinations unknown. It's a wonder how the Italians can make such beautifully dreamy music that scares the bejeezus out of us, but we're entranced every time! Each record comes with a cd version as well, nice.
A Crimson Grail is one of our favorite massive guitar ensemble compositions of all time, and now getting to hear a different version of it, recorded outdoors at the Lincoln Center with 200 guitarists brings us back once again to the totally sublime beauty of the piece. The way Chatham is able to compose and conduct that army of guitarists to be both so subtle and explosive at just the right moments is a testament to his talent, and another reminder that he really his one of the most exciting and incredible composers around. There is a patience in this piece that really allows you to slowly enter the zone, until you have no choice but to follow wherever the shimmering sounds of all these guitars take you.�
We're also glad for this release 'cause the previous recording of this piece, on Table Of The Elements, seems to be out of print these days. And extra cool is that our pal and WFMU music director Brian Turner was one of the guitarists at this performance, we can only imagine what a chill inducing experience it would be to be a part of creating this sonic beauty!
There are many reasons why somebody needs to smack some sense into Table Of The Elements, with this compendium of Rhys Chatham's work being simply the latest episode of marketing blunders. Sometime in the future, Table Of The Elements has plans to release a
Always unpredictable and often a little bit frustrating, Table Of The Elements have decided to re-release 2 of the 3 discs from the now out of print Rhys Chatham An Angel Moves Too Fast To See box set (the third disc to follow later?), with no mention on either of these two new discs that they are indeed the same discs contained in the box. So if you already own the Chatham box, you already have this stuff, but if you somehow missed the box, you absolutely need this!
A gorgeously packaged and lovingly assembled disc chronicling one of the most important works of guitar experimentalist and early drone pioneer / minimalist Rhys Chatham, a man whose career seemed to always have been overshadowed by fellow New Yorker / guitarist Glenn Branca, who may have borrowed his multiple guitar idea from Chatham anyway.
The interesting thing, to us at least, is how accessible most of Chatham's pieces are. Sure, he's a minimalist composer, an artist, an avant garde pioneer, but when you get right down to brass tacks, much of his music sounds a lot like Stereolab or Neu! Filtered through Television and downtown Manhattan and with some more challenging arrangements, but very post rock nonetheless. Endless crescendos and repetitive intros build and build, until the band often launches into propulsive krautrock jams. Simple, repetitive and totally hypnotic. Echoes of AQ faves Circle and Salvatore as well as Faust and Can. Even though the pieces are for multiple guitars as well as sometimes horns and drums, it's hard to hear anything other than some really nice, spacey jams. Occasionally the dense horn jams remind us of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" slowed down and played through the sound system at CBGB.
This disc, the 5 part title track, starts off with a dense brassy drone that sounds a bit like Niblock composing for an army of trumpets or a little bit like later records by Dutch metallers Gore. That jam quickly slips into a sleepy krautrock groove before drifting off. The second movement is a blissed out brass drone beneath a dynamic mathrock workout, stacatto bursts demarcating a wide open expense of reverberent whir. The third movement is straight up Stereolab / Neu!, a loping post rock rhythm, a dreamy sunshiney melody, all propulsive and hypnotic. Next up is a much more dissonant slab of twentieth century angularity, an amorphous cloud of swirling notes and thick washes of orchestra-tuning-up clatter and cacophony. The final movement sounds like Circle or Salvatore or Tortoise or Zombi, but with strange synthy swooshes, like bits of Chariots Of Fire or something. Driving and almost rocking, totally mesmerizing and head nodding.
While this stuff is obviously of interest to folks into modern minimalism ala Maclise, Cale, Coleclough and other masters of the mighty drone, Chatham's more rock stuff, like An Angel Moves Too Fast To See, will definitely appeal to the more adventurous post/pop rockers into the above mentioned outfits (Tortoise, Stereolab, Circle, Salvatore) as well as folks into all things krautrock/free rock/space rock.
Always unpredictable and often a little bit frustrating, Table Of The Elements have decided to re-release 2 of the 3 discs from the now out of print Rhys Chatham An Angel Moves Too Fast To See box set (the third disc to follow later?), with no mention on either of these two new discs that they are indeed the same discs contained in the box. So if you already own the Chatham box, you already have this stuff, but if you somehow missed the box, you absolutely need this!
A gorgeously packaged and lovingly assembled disc chronicling one of the most important works of guitar experimentalist and early drone pioneer / minimalist Rhys Chatham, a man whose career seemed to always have been overshadowed by fellow New Yorker / guitarist Glenn Branca, who may have borrowed his multiple guitar idea from Chatham anyway.
The interesting thing, to us at least, is how accessible most of Chatham's pieces are. Sure, he's a minimalist composer, an artist, an avant garde pioneer, but when you get right down to brass tacks, much of his music sounds a lot like Stereolab or Neu! Filtered through Television and downtown Manhattan and with some more challenging arrangements, but very post rock nonetheless. Endless crescendos and repetetive intros build and build, until the band often launches into propulsive krautrock jams. Simple, repetitive and totally hypnotic. Echoes of AQ faves Circle and Salvatore as well as Faust and Can. Even though the pieces are for multiple guitars as well as sometimes horns and drums, it's hard to hear anything other than some really nice, spacey jams.
This disc begins with the slow building epic title track, all keening guitars and droning sustain, peppered with splashes of jazzy percussion and extra layers of chordal warmth, but like most of Chatham's pieces, it eventually kicks into a groovy post rock / krautrock jam, driving drums, soaring melodies, all with a blissed out fuzzy sheen. Definite shades of Stereolab and Circle on this one. "Waterloo #2" is the track that reminds us of Fleetwood Mac's "Tusk" slowed down and played through the sound system at CBGB. Martial drumming and dense horn figures float above. Up next is the scuzzy garage stomp of "Drastic Classicism", nods to Faust and Can but with plenty of distorted guitar scuzz and atonal fuzz rock jangle. The minimalism here is in the relentless repeated main riff, building to a blissed out jam, similar to the way black metal riffs at their most buzzy fuzz out into epic dronescapes. But Chatham's take is more like some sort of Stooges/Brainbombs drone. Cool. "Guitar Trio" is another spacious post rock jam, guitars hover and float, chords and notes ring out and drift into and around each other, supported by a simple solid rhythm. Finally, things finish off with Chatham's infamous "Massacre On MacDougal Street", a nearly twenty minute long, horn / percussion freak out, with honking skronking horns moaning and screeching and warbling, weaving dense stretches of marching band repetition and long slow stretches of moaning and groaning drones, all above BIG percussion, booming toms, miltary snares, chaotic drum fills and spurts of complex tribalism. The perfect soundtrack for some insane sixties psychedelic horror film. Full of tension and minor key atonalism. Intense!
While this stuff is obviousl of interest to folks into modern minimalism ala Maclise, Cale, Coleclough and other masters of the mighty drone, Chatham's more rock stuff, like An Angel Moves Too Fast To See, will definitely appeal to the more adventurous post/pop rockers into the above mentioned outfits (Tortoise, Stereolab, Circle, Salvatore) as well as folks into all things krautrock/free rock/space rock.
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We were pleased and privileged to host minimalist composer Rhys Chatham for a signing last week while he was in town for his performance of A Secret Rose for 100 guitars at the Craneway Pavilion in Richmond. He was so nice, cheerful, and engaged (he signed Scott's vinyl copy of Factor X, his first release, and even offered to do his chart, as apparently astrology is one of Chatham's many passions!). Harmonie Du Soir is his latest release, and features two side long tracks. The cd has a 10 minute bonus track, "Drastic Classicism Revisited", which is also included with the digital download that comes with the vinyl. The first, title track begins with a piece for six electric guitars, bass and drums, the same arrangement as Die Donnergotter from 1986, and is a return to form, back to Chatham's early eighties minimalist deconstruction of rock music tropes where the composition seemingly glides along one chord structure yet the arrangement between instruments remains dynamically fluid. The second track/side, "The Dream Of Rhonabwy" is a twenty minute piece written for a seventy piece French brass band called Harmonie de Pontarlier, that is a moving and plaintive piece using slow martial rhythms and sustained tones with amazing flourishes to evoke a dreamlike textural tapestry of sound. So beautiful. Then, bonus cut "Drastic Classicism Revisited", like the title suggests, is a return to an early no-wave-ish whirlwind composition of sustained fast drumming and epic guitar squall. Fantastic!
Since 2000 Sylvain Chauveau has been making delicate and minimal musics, composing for dance and film and playing live on bills with the likes of Fennesz and Sigur Ros. But it wasn't until this record that we really took note of his delicate touch, creating soft fragile sounds that perfectly capture solitude and frozen emotion. All the tracks here were originally recorded for two films by Sebastien Betbeder. Strings and piano are the main instruments, played with a perfect restraint that helps create a lush and somber beauty. The music on Nuage has made us think of the clear airy sounds of Jon Luther Adams, the melancholic beauty of Michael Cashmore, the collaborations between Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamato and recent record of the week alumni Erik Enocksson. All very fine company to be in. And such a perfect record for the chill of winter. Sounds that can give our hyperactive minds a moment to simmer and slow down. So nice!
Long, long awaited vinyl reissue of this legendary 1973 lp, featuring American jazz trumpeter/composer Don Cherry and Polish avant garde composer Krzyztof Penderecki. Awesome mix of wild free jazz and 20th century classical, with wildly shrieking saxes and trumpets, bizarre chanted/sung vocals, both male and female, cool catchy almost bop-ish breakdowns, bizarre vocalisations, breathing and wheezing and whistles, recorded live at the Donaueschingen Music Festival in Germany on October 17, 1971. 3 tracks, 2 by Cherry, one by Penderecki.
We especially dig the second track wherein the audience was instructed to clap the rhythms to a droning sitar/vocal piece (with the crowd failing miserably in the beginning and laughing, embarrassed). The final track is the legendary "Actions for Free Jazz Orchestra" written & conducted by Penderecki and including such European free music faves of ours as Peter Brotzmann, Han Bennik and a bunch of others. The sound is dark and sparse, with bursts of straight up jazz rhythms punctuating the sinister soundscapes, as well as plenty of improvised noodling, especially some truly inspired freakout drumming and some beautifully haunting trumpet parts, which all coalesce into a completely riveting 16 minute masterpiece of 20th century-avant-free-classical-jazz. Or something like that.
Collection of this premier French soundpoem artist's work from 1956 to 1980, including stereo voice/breathing pieces and very cool stuttering electronics. Definitely for fans of the San Francisco Tape Music Center all-stars (Oliveros, Subotnick, Reich). Recommended.
A beautifully extensive live piece of long form minimalism from one of its most beguiling practitioners, Catherine Christer Hennix (remember The Electric Harpsichord?). Recorded at The Grimm Museum in Berlin in 2011, "Blues Dhikr Al-Salam (Blues Al Maqam)" is a 49 minute piece for voice, brass, computer and live electronics performed by Hennix and the newly formed electronic ensemble, Chora(s)san Time-Court Mirage, which includes aQ favorite dronologist Michael Northam on "time-mirage delay" and as the sound engineer. Originally commissioned for La Monte Young's 70th Birthday in 2005 as an 'infinitary' computer sound/animation environment, this is the first live recording of this piece. Modulating raga drones shift in an array of harmonic frequencies aided by layers of deep plaintive horns and processed vocals. There is a deep Tibetan Buddhist philosophy that flows throughout all of Hennix's work and in which she details in rather high-minded language inside this package, which would be difficult to paraphrase here, but the writing's closing line may sum up this piece nicely: "One of the Thousand sounds of Om."
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We'd never heard of Luciano Cilio before, but of course Jim O'Rourke has. The ubiquitious O'Rourke (Wilco/Sonic Youth/you name it) contributes liner notes to this beautifully presented deluxe digipack cd reissue of what amounts to the collected works of Cilio, an Italian avantgarde composer from the '70s whose music is indeed experimental but less academic than you might expect. But even without O'Rourke's endorsement, a listen to the cd should reveal to you that Cilio was exquisitely talented, and maybe something of a genius. This disc is a simply fantastic document of what we might consider a hybrid of 20th century classical, minimalist psych-prog, and folk music, not entirely of this world. The all-white cover perfectly echoes Cilio's lovely, quietly haunting compositions for acoustic guitar, cello, piano and flute, sometimes visited by wordless female vocals. Achingly melancholic, immensely deep, truly beautiful. Limited to 500 copies, this cd consists of Cilio's sole album, Dialoghi del Presente, originally released on EMI in 1977, along with several previously unreleased tracks. Apparently he more or less abandoned music after the album's release, and sadly committed suicide in 1983. Allan's favorite new long-lost reissue after the Flamen Dialis disc reviewed on list #194...
San Francisco based visual artist and composer, Ishan Clemenco, in conjunction with a show at NOMA Gallery has released this special edition 10" on dandelion-yellow color vinyl. Consisting of two pieces, the first, "Afterlight (for Henning Christiansen)" is a 7-minute fragment of a longer work for found pianos. Taken from recordings of pianos found in old churches, music rooms and theatres and atmospherically clustered in soft-focus overlapping arrangements, the cloudlike acoustical effects of layered random pianos creates a gentle building upon of harmonic overtones in an almost raga-like structure that is really quite beautiful.
The B-side, "Untitled (Typewriter), is dedicated to Samuel Beckett and is like the title implies, a work based on the rhythms made on an Hermes "baby" typewriter. Recorded during a residency at The Headlands Center For The Arts, the rhythms of the the taps, spaces and returns (ding!) of the old analog typewriter, based on karnatic musical structures bounce against the former military bunker walls in beautiful reverberations. So nice! Limited to 50 copies, this is a bit on the expensive side, but it is basically a limited edition artwork and they won't be around long. Beautifully packaged with an essay by artist Dean Smith.
More '70s Italian avant-garde composition nicely reissued by the Die Schachtel label.
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Along with the awesome photographs of Vittori Gelmetti (as new wave buff) and Walter Marchetti (as polyester clad drunk) found on their recent reissued discs, this collection of two bodies of work from Christian Clozier also features another prime fashion statement from the 20th Century's composers. Sure he's donning the traditional suit & tie, along with the moppish hair and bugged-out Lennon glasses of the stereotypical mod. Beyond fashion statements, Clozier's music is quite spectaular, best described as the evil cousin of Subotnik's "Silver Apples on the Moon". The two pieces "Quasars" and "Markanian 205" are bleak pieces which teeter on the edge of the eye of some mythical cyclone, falling into violent swells of synthetic noise and back into calm (if nervous) ambient passages.
Anybody making field recordings in Chernobyl is gonna get our attention. Couple that with an allegorical framework about the end of time rendered through allusions from the book of Revelation, and we're even more intrigued. Come Kingdom Come is an impressive modern classical record with all of these traits, those flourishes gracing orchestrations of strings, voice, and electronics, not too dissimilar to the likes of a Johann Johannsson or (dare we say?) Arvo Part. Colbert is an American composer currently living in Portugal with a hand in running the Binaural Residency Program, and has slowly been composing this body of work for years now. In fact, she performed a variation of this piece as a multimedia presentation collecting live VLF signals that she located within her glassine electronics and a video triptych (courtesy of Olivia Block) at The Lab in San Francisco back in 2012. For all of these terminal thoughts and ominous overtones, Colbert conjures a spacious, if somber atmosphere that hangs upon the languid swells from Colbert's sparse arrangements for plaintive piano and strings, sporadically accompanied by vocals from Gabrielle Crowe, who in turn alternates between chorale dreaminess and operatic libretto. The electronics and field recordings too are sparsely situated throughout the album, often presented as ghosts and echoes to the clusters of piano or strings or voice. Come Kingdom Come is a lovely album for sure and was released on Celer's imprint Two Acorns.
Some experimental music is more experimental than other experimental music. Nicolas Collins' Devil's Music, it's safe to say, was (and is) an Experiment. One that tests a theory described in the liner notes: "I have long assumed the radio to be the world's cheapest, yet most powerful synthesizer: you can find any sound out there; the only question is, can you find the sound you want when you want it?" Naturally, the results of this experiment fall into that realm of unusual sounds that would be reissued by Japan's ever-eccentric EM Records label, and glad we are of EM's diligent efforts to dig up such artifacts!
Devil's Music hails from the heyday of sampling music (late '80s), so it bears some similarity to the works of Christian Marclay and Steinski, but Collins is (as per his theorizing) using radios, not turntables. It also reminds us of stuff by John Oswald, the Tape-Beatles, and other "plunderphonic" artists, but in John Cage like fashion, Collins has introduced an element of chance into the genre of sample-basic music making. Inspired also by hip hop DJs, Collins' music here is performed live, in a spontaneous, improvisatory mode, at the mercy of whatever he can snatch from the local airways at that very moment to weave into his stuttery sound-collages. Every performance was thus very different in audio content, if not structure and rhythm.
Further explanation, from the liner notes to the original Devil's Music LP (1986): "[F]ragments of radio broadcasts are digitally sampled, looped, re-triggered and occasionally reversed or de-tuned. All material is taken from FM and AM transmissions occuring at the time of the performance. The performer plays off of certain musical ground-rules intrinsic to the sampling system (which consists of two modified inexpensive effect devices) to develop the quirky rhythmic interplay that characterizes the piece."
Conceptually (and chaotically) interesting, definitely, but difficult listening too. You know best your own tolerance for this sort of thing. People into rhythmic noisiness ought to like it. The density of this "music", and the element of repetition, makes it mesmeric, maybe. But for many, it might be maddening - ferinstance, hearing some anonymous announcer man say "outdoor swimming pool" over and over and over again, nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nineteen style, amidst a barrage of (drum machine?) beats, before the track shifts, ADD-like, to another non-sequitur sample randomly snatched from the airwaves, is sure to drive some folks nuts!
Though the first side of Devil's Music is supposed to be "dance" oriented (he tuned into his favorite of New York's urban dance stations, like a DJ looking for breaks), the inclusion of voices from radio advertising tends to dominate. The second side of Devil's Music is maybe a bit more, um, musical seeming in its source material. "More rock, less talk" would be the motto, except it's not rock, actually easy listening and classical radio stations being plundered. Both sides are featured on the first disc of this two disc set, along with a previously unreleased 1988 tape music piece utilizing lots of voices scanned from police band radio, ship-to-shore transmissions, taxi dispatch, etc., which aren't all cut up and stuttery like on Devil's Music, but patched together into more of a "narrative" exercise.
The second disc here consists of yet more delirious variations on the Devil's Music concept, realized at live concerts in Europe and the USA, originally released on a 1987 cassette release entitled Real Landscape. And also, in addition, on this disc you'll find a computer program Collins wrote recently that's essentially a software "recreation" of his original hardware set-up and compositional strategy so that YOU can plug a radio into your computer and try making the Devil's Music yourself!! There's both Mac and PC versions provided. (Not included on the vinyl format, obviously.)
And there's extensive liner notes (complete with footnotes) from Collins about his ideas, methods, and equipment (with color photos of the latter, for all you tech geeks). EM, as always, has certainly done a thorough job with this release, which deserves the attention. Difficult listening it may be, but put into historical context, you can see how some consider Collins a bit of a techno pioneer, and certainly hear how his work foreshadowed the digital "glitch" music of Oval and Lesser and the like later on.
Reissued for the first time on vinyl, A Monastic Trio was Alice Coltrane's remarkable 1968 solo debut. Made in tribute to the life of her husband John Coltrane after his death the previous year, its arrival heralded an incredible new voice, and seemingly from it a new spiritual direction in jazz was set forth. Deeply personal and reverent, A Monastic Trio is marked by Coltrane's cascading and majestic turns on both piano and harp, with musical support from Pharoah Sanders, Rashied Ali, Jimmy Garrison and Ben Riley. The pieces both burrow to the core of grief and longing delving into gospel and funereal blues forms while also using open Eastern musical influences to form ascending arcs of mystical transformative sound. While Coltrane had previously collaborated with her husband before he died, most notably on the epic Cosmic Music, her subsequent solo career after his death stood apart from his as she moved the focus away from his oft-frenzied and intense horn-led modalities and brought a deeper dedication to a vital cosmic musical core where her harp, piano and organ flourishes could intermingle more fluently with the rhythm section into an organically flowing life-affirming musical unit. This is essential!
For all their majestic beauty, it can sometimes be forgotten that some of Alice Coltrane's greatest records posses an intensity and power that most noise bands these days only wish they could achieve. We can't tell you how happy we are that Impulse has reissued two of her most overlooked, and jaw dropping albums, Universal Consciousness and Lord Of Lords.
Here's what we said about these two records (now on one disc together) when we reviewed them on their own years back.
Universal Consciousness: Wow. Of the many recent Alice Coltrane reissues, we have to say this might be the best one yet. Recorded in 1971, the record swells with beauty and emotion. It is serene and drone-y, a state of suspended bliss and yearning that is colored with propulsive drumming courtesy Rashied Ali and Jack DeJohnette, tensely high-pitched violin from Joan Kalisch, shimmering bells, and of course Alice's manic improv on the harp and ocean-lulling notes on the organ.
This record is so incredibly unbelievably beautiful, there's not a track that fails to attain superlative heights. Fans of modern experimental work like Vibracathedral Orchestra and Sunroof! should also definitely check this out.
Lord Of Lords: An incredibly spiritual album by Alice Coltrane from 1972. Her music reaches some of the most "Godly" moments on here, aptly named Lord of Lords. Highlights are her excerpt of Stravinsky's "Firebird" which she performed after a "ghostly visitation" by Stravinsky who offered Coltrane musical and spiritual advice and blessings, and her orchestral version of the gospel spiritual "Going Home". Further proof that Alice Coltrane was an artist who transcended genre, while we file her in jazz for convenience, she really was also a 20th century composer, a spiritual conjurer of musical magic!
An interesting idea for sure. One afternoon in October, 1969, Tony Conrad found himself in a fifth floor loft in Manhattan a couple blocks from Bryant Park, which was hosting a rally protesting the Vietnam War. The TV in his loft was blaring coverage of the protest, while the echoes from the speeches bounced through the city streets and into Conrad's apartment. Not surprisingly, he was recording the co-mingling between the mediated sounds of that protest through the TV and the diffused amplification of the live event, appearing with a subtle time-lag. Given the rather tumultuous political context of 2005 with an increasingly unpopular war abroad and an administration bungling almost every task at hand, the parallels to the context of 1969 protest should be self-evident by now.
It's 1969 and Tony Conrad finds himself fascinated and obsessed with the sounds of sine wave oscillators. One of the godfathers of minimalism nearside LaMonte Young, Conrad was always on the more harsh side of things then other Minimalist disciples like Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Fantastic Glissando is a series of electronic compositions that Conrad created with sine wave oscillators that he then processed through a pump counter with head gap delay. The result is an aggressive textured drone that sounds like something traveling near the speed of light. This cd reissue includes a bonus 10-minute track that was not included in the LP version. The first time we heard this in the store, it was pouring outside and by the time it ended the sun was shining...San Francisco natural occurence? Or the work of Conrad's intense hand in the sky? We're still not sure.
We've never been shy in revealing our unabashed love of the drone. Not many lists go by that we aren't singing the praise of some new dark drone or any of many drone-masters like William Basinski, Philip Jeck, Andrew Chalk, etc. Andee's love of the drone even led him to release a cd compiling selections from the amazing Drone Records 7" series on cd for the first time. So of course we're in full on awe when we get to hear the pioneers of all of that dronemusic and observe the veritable birth of the drone in modern minimalism. While it's still pretty impossible to get a hold of any LaMonte Young recordings, thankfully Tony Conrad has allowed and facilitated recent unearthings of his early drone masterpieces. Joan of Arc is the score he created in 1968 for Piero Heliczer's film of the same name. While Conrad is usually associated with his intense epic drones sourced from his violin this recording found him engaged with the pump organ in a way we've never heard before. Creating a dense and murky sonic underworld that sucks you under, burying you in its rumbling waves and wrapping you tight in a thick dense cloud of drones. Avant film aficionado's may be confused by the cover art which is actually a still of Tony Conrad in Ira Cohen's legendary film of the same year, The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda (reviewed elsewhere on this list).
Never before released, this is one of Conrad's favorite recordings and is fast becoming one of ours.
Recorded live at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in '95 this was the reunion of one of minimalist's great torch holders Tony Conrad along with one of experimental rocks greatest bands Faust. When they originally teamed up at a German filmmakers request, they made Outside The Dream Syndicate over three days together in 1971. A landmark record that took Conrad's affinity for building drones mixed with a rhythm section that added intense pulsations and textures to the sounds. While apparently Faust didn't really remember the recording sessions (what were they on?) they met up only two more times since the original recording to perform the piece live. This show was the third and last time they performed together and at this show they were also joined by the helping hands of Jim O'Rourke (is there a band he hasn't played with?). And wow! What an amazing show to have been at. With his La Monte Young cap on tightly, Conrad masterfully created a piece that no matter when it was produced evokes such a strong physical reaction. This is raw, building, blistering, pounding, droning brilliance! The way momentum keeps building works its way into your body and about half way into the piece you can't stop from getting completely wrapped up in it. The droning violin, the dirty percussion, the gut wrenching passion underneath and above it all! It's amazing how in these sounds you can hear so much of a handful of contemporary AQ favorites: Godspeed You Black Emperor's explosive drama, The Dirty Three at their most wild and rocking, Swans/Angels Of Light's blistering poignancy, but it all ends up seeming sorta like little league in comparison to the blood and guts that oozes out of this performance. As always Table Of The Elements appropriately package the cd with the care it deserves including some nice short conversations with Conrad and two great stickers of Conrad's face. Absolutely recommended!
"Whenever 'Fluxus' comes up, the three New York-born artists whose radio plays are collected on this CD seem to always be mentioned. They have appeared together in performances and they are also connected by their relationship to John Cage's aesthetic,
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As can be inferred from the title, Philip Corner presents three meditative works using the Indonesian instrumentation. However, Corner's organization priniciples follows more of a Western minimalist aesthetic with regular numeric structures. The first piece simply entitled "Gamelan" slowly adds new sounds at intervals that are half the amount of time for the previous sound to emerge. Starting with a huge silent gap of 64 seconds, the long resonant gongs increases in intensity as the rhythms multiply to 1/8 of a second. "The Barcelona Cathedral" is composed of slow beats by the gamelan enemble that clamour hypnotically every few seconds for 20 minutes. "Belum" appears to be a composition that originated in an 108 measure 'improvisation' that is repeated with variations throughout the composition. Though perhaps not as beautiful as Loren Nerell's "Lilin Dewa" as a Western synthesis of gamelan sounds, Corner's experiments are interesting fusions of gamelan within the context of '60s academically minded minimalism.
Solo piano works performed by avant-garde/Fluxus composer Philip Corner, recorded 1998. "Non-compulsive indeterminacy" never sounded so good.
Here's yet another record that under different circumstances could have been and yeah probably should have been a Record Of The Week. But for one thing, it's crazy expensive, and for another, it's taken us months to get enough just to list, and highlight, let alone make it ROTW. So that said, be prepared when we sell out to patiently wait while we try to get more. But for now, dig it:
Classical music by Ravel and Mussorgsky, recut, remixed, and recontextualized by techno legends Carl Craig and Moritz Von Oswald. The result? A gloriously plunderphonic soundscape that slips from shimmery soft focus drift, to a subtly chopped and screwed version of the original piece, to jumbled and blurred Oval-like digital collages, to skittery minimal house music, to dubbed out electronica, to groovy cinematic disco, to spaced out rhythmic ambience, well heck, needless to say, these guys basically pulled off the techno version of a kick ass Tim Hecker / Philip Jeck / Oval record.
The liner notes go into great detail about the process and the idea and the recording, but as with most records, it's the sounds that matter most, and the sounds here are divine. And the whole record somehow works as a single multi movement-ed piece. Each one drifting into the next, the segues seamless, even if the tracks are dramatically different.
The intro is a gorgeous hushed drone, laced with delicate melodies and soft breathless shimmers, almost new agey, a gorgeous ethereal drift that introduces the fanfare that will be the basis for the next few movements. And thus the first movement, a bit of dramatic fanfare, shuffling snares, stuttering horns, the arrangement is subtle, so on the surface it almost feels unaltered, but the notes seem to skitter, and overlap, creating a subtle yet dizzy march, until the second movement introduces the trill of still other horns, locked into a loop over the original, that in turn draped over the deep soft shimmer of the intro, a dense layered landscapes of sampled snares and horns, that grows more hypnotic and mesmerizing, until near the end, the first sign of added rhythms surfaces, a simple high hat pattern draped over that looped horn mesmer, building even more in the beginning of the third movement, before shifting gears completely part way through, the drums taking the lead, the Mussorgsky and the Ravel, relegated mere building blocks, samples transformed into wholly new shapes. The fourth movement follows suit, a gorgeous skittery, late night chunk of minimal Kompakt style techno, with plenty of synth buzz and dubby effects.
There's a brief interlude beginning with some jagged rhythms, and ending with some swoonsome swirling synths, which is simply preparing us for the two loooong closers.
The first, Movement 5, begins with a flurry of deep ominous horns, and dramatic strings, subtly looped into a never ending high end drone, the click in the loop a rhythmic pulse, pounded piano, all very ominous and sinister and epic, before giving way to something much more house-y and clubby, sounding a bit like a house music version of the James Bond theme, complete with those ominous horns, and plenty of sinister strings, which brings us to the final movement, quickly becoming our favorite, a woozy soundscape, all the various strings and horns muted and blurred into a slow shifting backdrop to simple stripped down percussion, distant drones, moaning strings, all hovering beneath the surface, an awesomely hypnotic main loop, and a groovy minimal rhythm, bells chiming in the distance, the backdrop gradually growing ever more ominous and atonal, but fading out completely. Leaving just the rhythm to play itself out.
So so good. Occupies some strange nether region between minimal techno, processed soundscapery, classical, new age, avant dronemusic, plunderphonics, pushes all our buttons, and most likely yours too. Gorgeously packaged like an old Deutsche Grammophon classical record, deluxe booklet with lots of photos and liner notes, and again, these have been tough to get a hold of so please be patient if we run out.
As much weird, loud, obtuse, and left of the margin music that we love and champion here, we also never shy away from music that we know is undeniably beautiful. Whether it's the majestic West African Kora music of Djibril Diabate and Lanaya or the evocative piano compositions of Lucian Cilio or the sweeping elegance of The Rachels. There is a long list of music that we cherish that manages to be both so beautiful and filled with soul. Richard Crandell deserves a spot right on the top of our all time beautiful music list. Playing the mbira (the thumb piano) to mesmerizing perfection, his last record was one of our favorites of 2004. Three years in the making and Spring Steel is another batch of stellar minimalist compositions that make us melt every time we hear them. There is a tenderness and focus to Crandell's playing that has the ability to make everything else in the world just fade away as you let his soft hypnotic sounds entrance you. Crandell is a rare performer, with such a delicate touch and impeccable taste.
Spring Steel sounds almost like Colleen paying homage to Steve Reich. Methodical and skilled yet so filled with soul and soothing power.
Digging ever deeper into the EM back-catalog (just like this wonderful Japanese label digs ever deeper and deeper into the realm of obscure and out-of-print LPs, looking for weird gems like this to reissue), we are so psyched to finally review this disc, devoted to the music of Noah Creshevsky. Like the recently reviewed EM releases by Barton Smith and David Rosenberg, this Creshevsky guy is another eccentric electronic music pioneer -- just look at him on the cover, with his bald head, mustache, and little sweater vest! But appearances aside, the eight tracks of audio found on this cd definitely live up to the EM standard of wonderful weirdness as well. What you've got to know about Creshevsky is that he was totally into the gospel of ol' JC -- no, not Jesus Christ, we're talking about 20th century avant-garde composer John Cage. Chance and randomness! The thick cd booklet (pretty much all in Japanese, but heavily illustrated with pictures and graphics) includes a color photo of Creshevsky hanging out with his hero in 1986, and there's also a track here, 1976's "In Other Words (Portrait Of John Cage)", that consists of nine minutes of quietly ominous electronic drone backing some words from JC. That's probably the "calmest" cut on this disc, though, as the rest are much more in the mode of tape-spliced mayhem. You get a display of musique concrete as chop socky boom-bap on the cut-up, percussive first track, "Strategic Defense Initiative" (which with a title like that you won't be surprised to learn dates from 1986). Puts us in mind of early Boredoms, almost! The next track, "Highway" from 1979, brings in more snippets of speech, a collage of non-sequiturs sampled from TV and records. But track three, 1971's "Circuit", sources its sounds, layered and looped, from the chiming strings of the harpsichord only. It's a mesmerizing, maddening bit of music that verges on suspense movie spookiness (with sudden jarring jumps in volume). Other cuts here include "Drummer" (1985), a choppy battery of drumming, of course, plus ambient street sounds and screwy tape garble; the amusing "Great Performances" (1978), a cartoonish concert of sampled symphonic sounds and more spoken non-sequiturs; "Sonata" (1980) which continues the classical theme but adds drum machine blasts and a dose of Nyquil to the verbal component. And then things wind up with the last and latest piece found here, 1992's "Cantiga", another jagged "classical" piece that sounds like the work of an ADD-afflicted Carl Stalling, that manages to establish a nicely moody effect in the end. Overall, The Tape Music Of Noah Creshevsky is damaged, deranged, and full of a lot of detail to delve into. Today's breed of digital Plunderphonicans perhaps could claim Creshevsky as an ancestor, and certainly the pop-culture element here posits Noah Creshevsky as a precursor to the (pioneering themselves) Tape Beatles, for instance. Neat.
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Two pieces for solo percussionist--in this case, local madman William Winant.
Great San Francisco musician and composer Beth Custer (Club Foot Orchestra, Eighty Mile Beach) assembled these players and instrument builders for the Yerba Buena performance recorded on this disc.
Moniek Darge is a Belgian composer, performer, and artist with quite an extensive history, but she's probably one who hasn't really gained much of an audience outside of the European academic circles. That's a shame, as she's done some amazing, wild, and engaging work over the years. She runs the Logos Foundation, which is something of a thinktank for experimental practices with plenty of high-brow theory coating their post-Fluxus happenings, many of which seem to involve a whole lot of nudity! Throughout the three decades of work through the Logos Foundation, Darge has been involved in building strange variations on music boxes, various robots & automatons, and pneumatic devices that must have been an influence on Yoshi Wada's post-bagpipe installation pieces. On the compositional side for Darge's, there's a unique hybridization of musique concrete practices, avant-garde vocalization, and a dystopic / mystical realization of minimalism.
Beginning in 2006, Darge embarked on the first of several journey to the Isle of Crete, working with local artists, presenting intermedia events, and composing the three extended pieces on this album. While one idea purported through the sound work was to conjure the mystical atmospheres of an ancient cult and its utopian principles, Darge's work here, as it typically has been, is haunting, eerie, and disarming. Deep moaning vocals open the first piece, emerging as a lugubrious chorale of intertwining ululations and eerie utterances. A melancholy drone, maybe from a harmonium, settles into the background while Darge, brings recordings of cicadas and variously untuned bells into the mix. It's not unlike Fursaxa or Christina Carter as reinterpreted by Luc Ferrari. The second piece is dominate by an impressive display of field recording prowess of the whipping winds around one of the mountains on Crete, with various clanks, metal creaking, and bells breaking up a recurring narrative of spoken texts. The final piece is a collage of aquatic tumblings, more cicadas, and more swirls of wind with an interest in the sound ecology of the island, rather than the narrative properties mentioned above. This compelling album has been released on Kye, the label run by Graham Lambkin from The Shadow Ring. Now, there's a nice endorsement!
Boy, has this reissue been a long time coming! Seeing that it's been a holy grail for new age collectors and long-form music heads long before the new age revival began revving up nearly a decade ago, it's surprising how long it has actually taken. We in fact have been listening to our ripped mp3's for the past few years courtesy of Greg Davis's incredible (and deeply missed) new age tape music blog, Crystal Vibrations. But now Jordan De La Sierra's masterpiece from 1977 has been given the deluxe reissue treatment it deserves, and for the very first time has been released as it was meant to be. Four gloriously long form well-tuned piano tracks (one per side for the lp, 2 for each cd), that hypnotically spiral and cascade in delirious transcendent clouds of chordal clusters and glacial repetitions. Recorded and edited from hours of sessions, the subsequent tape recordings were then taken to Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and taking advantage of the space's unique acoustics and 30 second natural delay, played back and rerecorded as they transmitted throughout the deep resonant space.
Hailing from California's Central Valley and later influenced by Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and Pandit Pran Nath as well as teachings from his spiritual explorations in India, De La Sierra wanted to take his classical music training to a different place when he was granted a scholarship at San Francisco's Conservatory of Music where he immersed himself in the avant garde and performed works by John Cage, Robert Ashley, and Earl Brown. He eventually moved into Project Artaud right here in our own Mission District where he worked with small ensembles of like minded artists and musicians. His spiritual curiosity led him everywhere and under the tutelage of Pandit Pran Nath, to composing music in India. But he eventually worked his way back to the Bay Area, where he met up with Stephen Hill who ran the legendary radio program Hearts in Space on KPFA, who championed De La Sierra's music and led him to the fledgling Bay Area label Unity Records, which released Gymnosphere, but not without a few hiccups. Poorly managed and hemorrhaging money, the label ditched the planned release of a double lp by De La Sierra complete with booklet of Indian inspired drawings and poems and instead only released the first half on one lp. The process had taken so long that by the time of the release, De La Sierra had moved onto other projects, one of them forming the Dylanesque folk ensemble The Jemstone Band. Gymnosphere sank into obscurity.
So now The Numero Group has restored the original release to its originally intended glory, including a full catalog of drawings, poems and liner notes, housed in an embossed outer sleeve with a tantric design. Beautifully packaged, this long awaited reissue has long influenced many modern day soundmakers like James Blackshaw, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma and Gregg Kowalsky. Fans of Iasos, Lubomyr Melnyck, Ariel Kalma, Anton Batagov or any of the musicians mentioned above, this is essential!
Self-taught Belgian composer Louis De Meester's brilliantly spooky electro-acoustic compositions get a specialized vinyl release courtesy of Demdike Stare / Andy Votel resurrection imprint Dead Cert. A versatile artist and thinker, De Meester worked his way up through the world of sound composition first through his role as music modulator for the Belgian Radio and Television broadcasting company (BRT), and then as head producer and artistic director at the Institute of Psychoacoustics and Electronic Music (IPEM) from 1962-1969. All of this while gaining notice for his compositions for theater productions. In fact, De Meester's unique knack for theatricality is what set these three concrete productions apart from the more impenetrable fare of mid-century electronic music that was being made in Europe (particularly in Cologne and Paris) at the time. A visual artist in his own right, De Meester was inspired by avant-garde poetry, theater and film, and sought out to make sound that would also service these other outlets. Recorded between 1958 and 1972, the three pieces employ a complex amalgam of sonorous collage, manipulations of cello and flute, ghostly voices reciting a cut-up letterist text, and strange unearthly mechanical rhythms and squelches in magnificently dreamy and darkened fields of abstracted sound. Recommended, but like all Dead-Cert releases, extremely limited!
Hephaestus, the blacksmith, the ancient Greek god of fire and metal. Also, the title of a 1993 album by skate metal avantgardists Iceburn, one of our faves of theirs that we wish would get reissued. However, THIS Hephaestus has got nothing to do with skate metal, although it is avantgarde. On this experimental drone disc issued by Editions Mego, cellist Arne Deforce's classically acoustic, acoustic classical instrument is subjected to the electronic effects of Pan Sonic's Mika Vainio.
We hadn't heard anything by Deforce before, but there's nothing like cello for creating some seriously dark, doleful atmospheres. And Mika Vainio is Mika Vainio - heck it's not really 'experimental' if he does it, 'cause you know the result will turn out great, right? So what you get here is pretty fantastic, six tracks (whose names all come from the cartography of Greek mythology) of spacious, abstract dronescapes. The first track, "Phlegethon", starts off in subtle stealth mode, quietly haunting, before the cello's drone is distorted into sounding something more like an aircraft engine, rumbling with distortion and feedback - yeah it gets HEAVY, sounding like SUNNO))) or Earth, or even Merzbow. Sudden -boom- explosions of low-end, the volume peaking, add even more dynamism. That's how it goes throughout the disc, there are restrained passages of cinematic near-ambience; and others, wherein the cello sonics are processed into something more fragmented, frazzled, even frightening. You'd think you were listening to a Caspar Brotzmann guitar solo some of the time! Really well done, and recommended.
With a lengthy resume including performances and / or recordings including Terry Riley's "In C" and Cornelius Cardew's "Treatise," not to mention his participation with Pauline Oliveros in The Deep Listening Band, it's a little surprising that Stuart Dempster
Modern classical composer's cut-up collage utilizing his students' pieces.
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Here's a disc for fans of the cult pulp horror master H. P. Lovecraft. Composer Stephen Dickman's specialty is to "set" texts (poems, prayers, prose) by various authors into musical structures of his own design. In this case, the major work here is a performance of Lovecraft's short story "The Music Of Eric Zann" by baritone Thomas Bruckner (known for his work in Robert Ashley's operas). The avant-classical vocalist reads Lovecraft's tale of cosmic terror (about a musician opening a portal to another dimension) in a semi-sung, semi-spoken sort of hypnotic chant. It, at first, seems more comic than cosmic sounding, but eventually the mesmerizing rhythms of Bruckner's narration begin to have a more disturbing effect. At over twenty minutes, and with no instrumental accompaniment, it really starts to sound like Bruckner is losing his mind--the typical fate of all Lovecraft protagonists! Bizarre and ludicrous, perhaps, but pretty cool. The rest of the disc is great too, with one text-less piano piece of great beauty, as well as more singing by both Bruckner and soprano Elizabeth Farnum, of texts by Rumi, Milarepa, and Rabbi Nathan of Bratslav. These tracks feature either piano or violin accompaniment.
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Along with the Rhythmania disc by J.D. Robb we recently reviewed, Locust has reissued on cd another example of early 'electronica', this 1961 Folkways LP by famed tape music pioneer Tod Dockstader, whose experiments in musique concrete and pure electronics are always lively and dramatic. The simply if accurately titled Eight Electronic Pieces is a work of abstract sonic theatre constructed from a large library of tape 'cells' -- 12,000 feet of tape in total -- sourced from recordings made both in the studio and out. All the noise and chaos of the big city (the Big Apple in this case) seems to be swept up in these compositions, with the tape speed manipulations corresponding to the flow of traffic, although little you hear is readily identifiable, even if evocative of the roar of a jet plane overhead, or animals in the wild. Most of the sounds are suggestive only of the pings and pongs and oscillations that they are. Laboratory Music you might call it. Laborious at any rate, when you think of the hours of craft and creativity that Dockstader devoted to works like this, sustained really by his own excitement at the possibilities inherent the genre he was helping to invent, wherein the role of the engineer (composer) utterly supercedes that of the not-now-so-necessary musicians. Listening to sound, and editing sound, replaces writing music (or becomes a way of 'writing' music). In other words, we wouldn't have, say, Matmos today without the likes of Tod Dockstader back when. But not only is his stuff, like Eight Electronic Pieces, worth checking out for historical reasons, it's gonna give your ears something to chew on that's still vital forty years later.
